sculpture

PAINT IT BLACK

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“She’s got everything she needs,
She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
She’s got everything she needs,
She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black.”1

Louise Nevelson
“Black Wall”
1959
Painted wood
2642mm x 2165mm x 648mm
The Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

We might be reminded of a couple songs on this subject: the first one written by Bob Dylan and the other by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Or, we might think of Goya’s late Pinturas Negras from 1819 to 1823; or two individual bodies of monochromatic abstractions produced by Ad Reinhardt and Louise Nevelson during the 1960’s. All incorporating the color black. Additionally, poets such as Robert Bly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Edward Hirsch have described various uses of this same color. Hirsch especially has commented on this in one of the essays in his larger collection titled The Demon and the Angel. He quotes a statement from the painter Robert Motherwell, and takes note that there are both physical and technical as well as psychological reasons for using this specific color.

Aaron Siskind
“Installation view of the ‘Black or White’ Exhibition”2
1950
b&w photograph
14cm x 25cm
Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

“The New York painters discovered that they could use black pigments to create a feeling that was sometimes infernal, sometimes transcendent. They entered a zone of black hues that was both boldly contemporary and richly archaic. Black fit the spirit of urban painters who also embraced a Modernist Primitivism: ‘The chemistry of the pigments is interesting: ivory black, like bone black, is made from charred bones or horns, carbon black is burnt gas,’ Robert Motherwell explained in a catalog note to the 1950 show Black or White. ‘Sometimes I wonder, laying in a great black stripe on a canvas, what animal’s bones (or horns) are making the furrows of my picture.”3

In another collection, My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy, Robert Bly includes several examples of the ekphrastic tradition related to this subject. He speaks of Cézanne and Monet, as well as Giotto, Fra Lippi, Rembrandt, and especially Robert Motherwell.

For Robert Motherwell

“Hunter, give me your horse. I am going into sorrow again.
I’m looking for the dead people hidden in the grass.
Help me up. I am crazy about suffering again.

I see that I am walking in a dead man’s shoes.
I have been born so many times as an orphan. The thin fiddle
Strings stretched tight have saved me from suicide.

When Robert Motherwell lifts up his two black clouds
So that they float a few feet from each other,
I know grief is the one who tells me what to do.

The soul can never get enough of the taste of its sorrow.
I am a horse throwing his head sideways, galloping
Away from the place where the happy people live.

I don’t care anymore whether I am educated or not.
We have learned so much pain by not going to school.
Our lines suggest the luck lost between heartbeats.

We who love Motherwell’s black clouds may be insane,
But at least we know where to feed. We are close
Relatives of the birds that followed Jesus to Egypt.”4

Robert Motherwell
“Elegy to the Spanish Republic”
1962
Acrylic on canvas
71″ x 132 1/4”
Yale University Art Gallery,
New Haven, Connecticut

As poets over the years, Robert Bly, Edward Hirsch, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti have all been interested in their contemporaries who were painters, as the above examples by Hirsch and Bly illustrate. In the example below, one of his late prose poems, Ferlinghetti writes about the many transformative processes that painters often go through, inspired by a certain painting by Motherwell.

The Painter’s Dilemma

“There they all were still, the unfinished canvasses, all chimeras, chiaroscuro illusions, dead stick figures still to be brought to real life, with their numbered pigments upon the canvas ground where formed the limbs the figures the faces of longing, yearning dogs and hungry horses’ heads among them, the skulls with ears, liquid porches, spilling light, onto the canvas, pools of it forming into shape of eyes, but as soon as they were formed they ran down with too much turpentine and ran onto the dark dogs and horses, and they turned into echoes of laughter with every mocking sound a different color echoing about the canvas and transfiguring all its painted parts, horses’ penises turned to yellow flutes that fitted to manifolds that fitted into female plumbing that in turn dissolved and floated down streets as yellow sunlight, while numbered shadows melted and percolated up into the gutters of tilted houses. Hunger and passion were what was needed but this got lost in the whirl of paint, in the depths of the cave that every canvas became, and the brush could not reach the boundaries of being inside Plato’s Cave.”5

Robert Motherwell
“In Plato’s Cave”
1991
Acrylic on canvas
72″ x 96”
National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC.

These have been several observations pertaining to this one subject, which are shared by Robert Bly and Robert Motherwell, Edward Hirsch and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It is a specific theme and color range that occurs in various periods of art history. And in Rock ’n Roll. So it seems like some one should have the final word here. But it will come to this, shared by three writers and one painter: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Franz Kline for one of his great ‘black’ paintings, and last but not least: Robert Bly.

“I see a red door
And I want it painted black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black. . . .”

“Maybe then, I’ll fade away
And not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up
When your whole world is black. . . .”

“I wanna see the sun
Blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted
Painted black. . . .”6

Franz Kline
“Untitled”
1952
Enamel on canvas
53 3/8” x 68”
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York.

“Some people say
A painting is a pitcher full of the invisible.”7

“I don’t know why these poems keep veering off
Toward darkness.”8

1 Dylan, Bob; “She Belongs to Me” from Writings and Drawings; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; New York, New York; 1973; p.159.

2 In this installation photograph of the exhibition “Black or White” by Aaron Siskind, the works shown are from left to right: “Dark Pond” by Willem de Kooning, 1948; “Granada” by Robert Motherwell, 1948-1949; and “Germania II” by Hans Hofmann, 1950. Kootz Gallery, New York, New York, 1950.

3 Hirsch, Edward; The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration; Harcourt, Inc.; New York, San Diego and London; 2002; p. 183.

4 Bly Robert; My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy; Harper Perennial; New York, London, Toronto and Sydney; 2005; p. 59.

5 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence; When I Look at Pictures, Peregrine Smith Books; Salt Lake City, Utah; 1990; p. 46.

6 Jagger, Mick, & Keith Richards; Aftermath: Paint It Black; Audio Recording; Decca Records & RCA Studios; Los Angeles, California; 1966.

7 Bly Robert; My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy; Harper Perennial; New York, London, Toronto and Sydney; 2005; p. 13.

8 Bly Robert; My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy; Harper Perennial; New York, London, Toronto and Sydney; 2005; p. 85.

MARIANNE MOORE AND THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE

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Since ancient times, certain stories have been handed down from one generation to another through the spoken word. They were collected by such writers as Ovid, Homer, Aesop; other later fabulist writers; and even Rumi. It was later that they were finally published. There are also times when pieces of writing, or works of art are not merely illustrations of each other, but are truly complementary, that they support one another. “The Fables of La Fontaine” are a great example of this.

Pierre Julien
“La Fontaine with the Manuscript of the Fox and the Grapes”
1785
Marble
5′ 8″ x 3′ 7 1/4″ x 4′ 2 3/4″
The Louvre, Paris, France

“The Fables of La Fontaine” were published from 1668 to 1694. Over these years several editions were illustrated by François Chauveau, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Gustave Doré: these becoming major works of art in their own right. They were translated into English by Walter Thornbury in 1868 and much later by the Imagist poet Marianne Moore in her “Late Poems from 1965 to 1972.”

As this ancient tradition of story telling spread throughout the world, several of Aesop’s Fables found their way from the West to the East. As Jelaluddin Rumi had himself been collecting similar stories, several of them were included in his late work the Masnavi. In more recent times, new translations of these have been undertaken by Coleman Barks, especially in his books on The Soul of Rumi and One-Handed Basket Weaving.

So the following is a selection of three poems. Two versions of the story of the friendship between a bear and a gardener: the first is Marianne Moore’s translation of La Fontaine’s “The Bear and the Garden-Lover” and the second one is Coleman Barks’ translation of “The Man with a Bear” by Rumi. The final selection is a short piece from Marianne Moore’s translations titled “The Fox and the Grapes.” The works of art by Gustave Doré, an Anonymous Persian Miniaturist, and François Chauveau.

The Bear and the Garden-Lover

“A bear with fur that appeared to have been licked backward
Wandered a forest once where he alone had a lair.
This new Bellerophon, hid by thorns which pointed outward,
Had become deranged. Minds suffer disrepair
When every thought for years has been turned inward.
We prize witty byplay and reserve is still better,
But too much of either and health has soon suffered.
No animal sought out the bear
In coverts at all times sequestered,
Until he had grown embittered
And, wearying of mere fatuity,
By now was submerged in gloom continually.
He had a neighbor rather near,
Whose own existence had seemed drear;
Who loved a parterre of which flowers were the core,
And the care of fruit even more.
But horticulturalists need, besides work that is pleasant,
Some shrewd choice spirit present.
When flowers speak, it is as poetry gives leave
Here in this book; and bound to grieve,
Since hedged by silent greenery to tend,
The gardener thought one sunny day he’d seek a friend.
Nursing some thought of the kind,
The bear sought a similar end
And the past just missed collision
Where their paths came in conjunction.
Numb with fear, how ever get away or stay here?
Better be a Gascon and disguise despair
In such a plight, so the man did not hang back or cower.
Lures are beyond a mere bear’s power
And this one said, ‘Visit my lair.’ The man said, ‘Yonder bower,
Most noble one, is mine; what could be friendlier
Than to sit on tender grass and share such plain refreshment
As native products laced with milk? Since it’s an embarrassment
To lack what lordly bears would have as daily fare,
Accept what if here.’ The bear appeared flattered.
Each found, as he went, a friend was what most mattered;
Before they’d neared the door, they were inseparable.
As confidant, a beast seems dull.
Best live alone if wit can’t flow,
And the gardener found the bear’s reserve a blow,
But conducive to work, without sounds to distract.
Having game to be dressed, the bear, as it puttered,
Diligently chased or slaughtered
Pests that filled the air, and swarmed, to be exact,
Round his all too weary friend who lay down sleepy—
Pests—well, flies, speaking unscientifically.
One time as the gardener had forgot himself in dream
And a single fly had his nose at its mercy,
The poor indignant bear who had fought it vainly,
Growled, ‘I’ll crush that trespasser; I have evolved a scheme.’
Killing flies was his chore, so as good as his word,
The bear hurled a cobble and made sure it was hurled hard,
Crushing a friend’s head to rid him of a pest.
With bad logic, fair aim disgraces us the more;
He’d murdered someone dear, to guarantee his friend rest.

Intimates should be feared who lack perspicacity;
Choose wisdom, even in an enemy.”1

Gustave Doré
Jean de La Fontaine’s “L’Ours et l’amateur des jardins”
1868
Wood engraving
Public Domain

“The Man with a Bear”

“For the man who saved the bear
from the dragon’s mouth, the bear
became a sort of pet.

When he would lie down to rest,
the bear would stand guard.

A certain friend passed by,
‘Brother how did this bear
get connected to you?’

He told the adventure with the dragon,
and the friend responded,
‘Don’t forget
what your companion is. This friend
is not human! It would be better
to choose one of your own kind.’

‘You’re just jealous of my unusual helper.
Look at his sweet devotion. Ignore
the bearishness!’

But the friend was not convinced,
‘Don’t go into the forest
with a comrade like this!
Let me go with you.’
‘I’m tired.
Leave me alone.’
The man began imagining
motives other than kindness for his friend’s concern.
‘He has made a bet with someone
that he can separate me from my bear.’ Or,
‘He will attack me when my bear is gone.’

He had begun to think like a bear!

So the human friends went different ways,
the one with his bear into a forest,
where he fell asleep again.

The bear stood over him
waving the flies away.

But the flies kept coming back,
which irritated the bear.

He dislodged a stone from the mountainside
and raised it over the sleeping man.

When he saw that the flies had returned
and settled comfortably on the man’s face,
He slammed the stone down, crushing
to powder the man’s face and skull.

Which proves the old saying:

IF YOU’RE FRIENDS
WITH A BEAR,
THE FRIENDSHIP
WILL DESTROY YOU.

WITH THAT ONE,
IT’S BETTER TO BE
ENEMIES.”2

Illustration contained in the Manuscript W.626.79B
“Masnavi-i ma’navi” by Jalal al-Din Rumi
1663
Ink and pigments on thin laid paper
10 7/16” x 5 7/8”
The Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore, Maryland.

The Fox and the Grapes

“A fox of Gascon, through some say of Norman descent,
When stared till faint gazed up at a trellis to which grapes were tied—
Matured till they glowed with a purplish tint
As though there were gems inside.
Now grapes were what our adventurer on strained haunches chanced to crave
But because he could not reach the vine
He said, ‘These grapes are sour; I’ll leave them for some knave.’

Better, I think, than an embittered whine.”3

Francois Chauveau
“Illustration for the Fables de La Fontaine, Volume 1”
1668
Burin engraving
Claude Barbin & Denys Thierry,
Paris, France

1 Moore, Marianne; Grace Schulman, ed.; The Poems of Marianne Moore, Viking Penguin; New York, New York; 2003; pp. 370-371.

2 Barks, Coleman; RUMI One-Handed Basket Weaving Poems on the Theme of Work; MAYPOP; Athens, Georgia; pp. 23-24.

3 Moore, Marianne; Grace Schulman, ed.; The Poems of Marianne Moore, Viking Penguin; New York, New York; 2003; p. 365.

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

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Raphael’s painting of “St. George and the Dragon” from the collection of the National Gallery of Art is an unforgettable image. It is an heroic and monstrous image contained within a very small sized painting. The figure is astride his horse, they are fighting as one, vanquishing this beast, with a panoramic landscape framing the whole image. It is a classic theme, echoed by many artists.

Raphael
“Saint George and the Dragon”
1505
Oil on wood
11.2″ x 8.5″
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

As in the ‘folk tradition’ in music, one artist will set out a theme, which is later taken up and elaborated upon, by later artists. The ideas and images continue to grow and develop over time. The 15th Century German artist Bernt Notke and the 20th Century American poet Robert Bly are two important examples of this process.

Taking its inspiration from the sculptural group of the same name by the German artist Bernt Notke, “St. George and the Dragon” is an excellent example of the ekphrastic tradition. Robert Bly is literally reading this sculpture from top to bottom: from the boyish expression on the face of this knight down to the horrific vestige of the monster on his death bed.

Over the years, the poet Robert Bly made several appearances at the Butler University Visiting Writers Program here in Indianapolis, including 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2003. I have continued to follow his work over these years, and had it not been for these visits, I would never have heard of, nor read about, this artist and this particular piece of sculpture.

Bernt Notke was an eastern German painter, printmaker and sculptor who lived from 1440 to 1509. During his lifetime he lived and worked in Lassahn and Lübeck, several other areas near the Baltic Sea, and made intermittent visits to Sweden. It was in Stockholm in 1489 that he produced his most important work, “St. George and the Dragon” for the City Church, now known as the Cathedral of St. Nickolas.

Robert Bly has often studied and written about works of visual art. These have included both Bernt Notke’s “St. George and the Dragon” and Albrecht Durer’s etching of “Two Middle Aged Lovers.”1 Bly has not just referred to earlier German artists: many others have included ancient examples of an Egyptian figure of “Isis” and a Mycenean “Ecstatic Mother,”2 both at the Louvre. He also references Pieter Breughel’s painting of a Flemish pageant3 (now only known to us as a woodcut printed by an anonymous artist in 1566), as well as the great series of “Haystacks” painted by Claude Monet. Bly always seems to be attracted to the heroic and the universal and how they both are intertwined with the personal and everyday existence of his subjects.

Bernt Notke
“St. George and the Dragon”
1489
Bronze replica of the original wood and mixed media.
3.75 meters high, 6 meters including base.
The Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas,
Stockholm, Sweden

St. George and the Dragon

A sculpture made by Bernt Notke
in 1489 for Stockholm Cathedral

“The dragon is losing.
He fights on his back
Fiercely, as when a child
Lifts his four feet
To hold off
The insane parent.
His claws grasp
The wooden lance that has
Pierced his thorny
Breast. . . . But too late. . . .

As children, we knew ours
Was a muddy greatness.
We knew our part
Lay with the dragon.

And this girlish knight?
Oh I know him.
I read the New
Testament as I lay
Naked on my bed
As a boy. The knight
Rises up radiant
With his forehead
Eye that sees past
The criminal’s gibbet
To the mindful
Towers of the spirit city.
But I now hate
This solar boy
Whom I have been.

This solar knight
Grows victorious
All over the world.
And the dragon? He
Is the great spirit
The alchemists knew of.
He is Joseph, sent down
To the well. Grendel,
What we have forgotten,
Without whom is nothing.”5

And as a footnote to all of this, I remember a painting from several years ago by the contemporary artist, Ellen Fischer. It is an abstracted version of St. George based on that Raphael painting mentioned above from the National Gallery. Many of Fischer’s earlier paintings incorporate the playful placement and movement of a variety of objects on and around the picture plane.

In this particular painting, “St. George and the Dragon,” she includes all of the elements from the original with slightly differing placements. This painting however, stands out as very tightly constructed: horse and rider fused as one, the shadow of the leg and tail of the monster just below the middle of the horse. It gives us an interior intensity complimented with the perfect placement of the various elements.

When I asked her about this, this was her response:

“I made St. George and his horse one and the same! See the princess in the background with the red dress? She is in the distance in my painting, too—iconography is the same in every picture I can think of—I’ve always loved St. George’s heroic, plump white horse, who appears to be as much into the fight as St. George, swinging its hooves at the dragon!”6

Ellen Fischer
“St. George and the Dragon”
c. 1977-1978
Oil on canvas
48″ x 60”
Collection of the artist

1 Bly, Robert; Eating the Honey of Words; Harper Collins Publishers; New York, New York; 1999; pp. 119 & 202-203.

2 Bly, Robert; Sleepers Joining Hands; Harper Collins Publishers; New York, New York; 1991; pp. 35 & 45.

3 Bly, Robert; Iron John; Adddison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.; New York, New York; 1990; pp. 244-245.

4 Bly, Robert; The Night Abraham Called to the Stars; Harper Collins Publishers; New York, New York; 2002; p. 15.

5 Bly, Robert; “St. George and the Dragon” from Eating the Honey of Words; Harper Collins Publishers; New York, New York; 1999; pp. 202-203.

6 Fischer, Ellen; “A statement on St. George and the Dragon;” E-MAIL communication with this author; 14 April 2022, 7:58am.

WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA: THREE POEMS

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In the conclusion of his book, Vermeer in Bosnia, Lawrence Weschler writes about two of Wislawa Szymborska’s poems: “In Praise of Dreams” from 1986, and “Maybe All This” from 1993. From the first poem he notes that Szymborska wrote: “In my dream . . . I paint like Vermeer of Delft.” And in the second one, he speculates: “. . . the picture Szymborska’s words have in mind must be something very like Vermeer’s Lacemaker. How marvelously, at any rate, the poem helps elucidate the painting, and vice versa.”1 To my mind, this is one of the most important functions of the ekphrastic tradition.

In her collected work, Wislawa Szymborska provides us with several examples of this tradition. One especially is a diminutive poem, of only six lines describing a diminutive painting of a milkmaid by Vermeer. When this was written, the author was surely reflecting upon earlier wars and invasions in Europe, especially in her homeland of Poland. Today however, it has taken on a new and timely meaning related to the Ukraine.2

In earlier work, Szymborska takes a more generalized view through a museum, taking note of certain historic objects: an antique plate, a necklace, gloves and shoes, swords, and even a lute. She alludes to the scene without illustrating it.

In another poem she doesn’t literally show the ‘Tower of Babel’ as it was painted by Pieter Brueghel, but she does set up a dialogue between two of its inhabitants. There are two different type faces printed throughout this conversation: Italic for the first one, and ROMAN for the second. Although they are both placed together on the ensuing lines, they clearly do not communicate in any logical way. The speaking in different languages and at cross purposes has begun.3

In several other poems however, Szymborska takes a cue directly from the works of art. These include an ancient Greek sculptural fragment, and paintings by both Pieter Brueghel and Johannes Vermeer.

BRUEGHEL’S TWO MONKEYS

“This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.

The exam is History of Mankind.
I stammer and hedge.

One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,
the other seems to be dreaming away—
but when it’s clear I don’t know what to say
he prompts me with a gentle

clinching of his chain.”4

Pieter Brueghel
“Two Monkeys”
1562
Oil on wooden panel
20cm x 23cm
Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany

GREEK STATUE

“With the help of people and the other elements
time hasn’t done a bad job on it.
It first removed the nose, then the genitalia,
next, one by one, the toes and fingers,
over the years the arms, one after the other,
the left thigh, the right,
the shoulders, hips, head, and buttocks,
and whatever dropped off has since fallen to pieces,
to rubble, to gravel, to sand.

When someone living dies that way
blood flows at every blow.

But marble statues die white
and not always completely.

From the one under discussion only the torso lingers
and it’s like a breath held with great effort,
since now it must
draw
to itself
all the grace and gravity of what was lost.

And it does,
for now it does,
it does and it dazzles,
it dazzles and endures—

Time likewise merits some applause here,
since it stopped work early,
and left some for later.”5

“The Gaddi Torso”
1st Century BC.
Marble
84cm high
The Uffizi Galleries, Florence, Italy

Perhaps works of art actually do survive, in one way or another, in one form or another, in order to remind us of what is important. They need not follow the dictates of ‘socialist realism’ nor the fashions of ‘post-modernism’ and so many other contemporary isms. What we end up experiencing is the persistence of each artist, their story and how they want to tell it, even if it ends up being only a fragment, or a whisper. The artist’s voice, carried through even in a fragment, is an antidote to the craziness of our world during these times.

Johannes Vermeer
“The Milkmaid”
1658-1660
Oil on canvas
17 7/8” x 16”
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.

VERMEER

“As long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted silence and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the jug to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.”6

1 Weschler, Lawrence; Vermeer in Bosnia; Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc.; New York, New York; 2004; p. 403.

2 Szymborska, Wiesława; Poems New and Collected 1957-1997; (Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak); Harcourt Brace & Company; New York, San Diego, London; 1998; p. 30.

3 Szymborska, Wiesława; Poems New and Collected 1957-1997; (Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak); Harcourt Brace & Company; New York, San Diego, London; 1998; p. 57.

4 Szymborska, Wiesława; Poems New and Collected 1957-1997; (Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak); Harcourt Brace & Company; New York, San Diego, London; 1998; p. 15.

5 Szymborska, Wisława; Here; (Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak); Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston, New York; 2010; p. 77.

6 Szymborska, Wisława; Here; (Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Baranczak); Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston, New York; 2010; p. 55.

The Letter

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No, this is not about The Boxtops, nor Joe Cocker’s cover of their mournful rock ballad from 1967, although there is a reference to a Broadway musical from 1953. This concerns any number of artists who moved to New York City during the early and middle years of the 20th Century. They came especially from the Mid-West. David Smith was one of them, having been born and raised in Decatur, Indiana. Often feeling homesick, there is a certain letter, in the form of a sculpture, which he imagined writing home.

A. Eriss
“David Smith”
B&W Photograph
1936
(p. 11; David Smith by David Smith.)

Smith first worked in offices in Washington, DC and New York, and later as a welder in a steelworks. He was simultaneously energized by the life and pace of the east coast and demoralized by the loneliness and solitude that he found there. “Yet lonesomeness is a state in which the creative artist must dwell much of the time….”1

This instantly reminded me of Rainer Maria Rilke and the advice he had written in a letter from Rome on 14 May 1904 to his younger poet friend: “This very wish will help you, if you use it quietly, and deliberately and like a tool, to spread out your solitude over wide country. People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”2

David Smith was doubly aware of this I think. While many of his contemporaries were easily falling into camps based solely on media or subject matter, his stated goal was that this work was an attempt to bridge the gap between painting and drawing and sculpture: a most difficult project.

There are several examples of this work: severely linear pieces that often contain, or are made up of, an arrangement of attenuated forms and glyphs. A great example of this is a beautiful piece in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art titled “The Egyptian Barnyard” and often described as a drawing in steel, or in this case, welded silver.

David Smith
“Egyptian Barnyard”
1954
Wrought and soldered silver on wood base
14 1/2” x 24” x 5 1/2”
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James W. Alsdorf
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana

Although his work has often been held up as great formalist abstraction, there are specific examples of content inherent in many of Smith’s pieces. For instance, these figurative gesture drawings of the dancer Martha Graham.

David Smith
“Studies of Martha Graham”
1938
12” x 19”
Drawing on paper after a series of photographs by
Barbara Morgan.
Collection of Candida and Rebecca Smith.

There are also photographic references to his daughters running and tumbling through their back yard, portraits of other artists and characters, and even several pieces inspired directly from Alberto Giacometti’s early masterpiece “The Palace at 4:00 AM.”

David Smith
“Interior for Exterior”
1939
Steel and bronze
18” x 22” x 23 1/4”
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Orin Raphael

Over the years, writers such as Cleve Gray3 and Edward F. Fry4 have provided hints as to the content of “The Letter.” In 1967 at the Yale-Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art it was Mr. Gray who lectured on David Smith, whose biography he had just finished editing. In one of the earliest exhibitions I had visited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, it was the David Smith Retrospective of 1969 that made a lasting impression. Finally, during my freshman year in art school in Baltimore, an early winter 1965 visiting artist lecture by David Smith himself still rings true to me in all that he said.

David Smith
“Sketchbook Study for The Letter”
c. 1950
Pen and ink and pencil on paper
David Smith Archives, III — 1283
New York, New York

In order to decipher this letter, we can see in the drawing study a salutation in the top left corner and a signature at the lower right. In between we have the written body made up of a series of scrap railroad hardware “h’s” and “y’s” and “o’s” forming a message. The particular wording of this letter itself is borrowed from a 1953 song that was included in the Broadway musical “Wonderful Town.”

In short, two young girls, sisters Ruth and Eileen Sherwood from Columbus, Ohio, arrive in Greenwich Village determined to make it in the city, one as a writer, the other as an actress. From their basement apartment, they are shaken by blasts from the nearby construction of a new subway line, as well as late night knocks on their door by ‘customers’ of the former tenant known as Violet. They are stricken with homesickness, and musically ask: Why oh why oh, did we leave Ohio? This reference did indeed become the content of David Smith’s “Letter.”

“DEAR MOTHER”

“OH WHY,
OH WHY OH,
DID I EVER LEAVE
O HI OH?”

“YOUR SON, DAVID SMITH”

David Smith
“The Letter”
1950
Steel
37 3/4” x 22 7/8 x 11”
The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute
Utica, New York

1 Clark, Trinkett; The Drawings of David Smith; International Exhibitions Foundation; Washington, DC; 1985; p. 20.

2 Rilke, Rainer Maria; Letters to a Young Poet; W. W. Norton & Company; New York, New York; 1934 & 1962; p. 53.

3 Gray, Cleve, ed.; David Smith by David Smith; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; New York, New York; 1968.

4 Fry, Edward F.; David Smith; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; New York, New York; 1969.

BARBARA FRITCHIE AND THE AMERICAN FLAG

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In American history classes in high school we learned of the story of a woman who insisted on waving her country’s flag during the Civil War even as a Confederate general was leading his troops in retreat through the town of Frederick, Maryland and back into northern Virginia.  We knew her name to be Barbra Fritchie, but several other spellings were used, including Frietchie and Frietschie.

“Barbara Fritchie”
Steel plate engraving
1867[i]

At that time, Miz Fritchie was ninety years old, and although she occasionally cheered on Union Army troops, it may have been a woman in nearby Middletown who actually waved the flag in this particular incident as Confederate soldiers passed by.

To add to the confusion, John Greenleaf Whittier had only heard of this incident through other reports and constructed his narrative from a distance.  Although Lee is mentioned early in the poem, it was Stonewall Jackson who was actually leading Lee’s army.  Flags may have also been waved at A. P. Hill and Ambrose Burnside as their armies passed through this area during those times.  Be that as it may, Whittier’s poem honoring Barbara Frietchie became a tribute to the local community in Frederick as well as an inspiration to abolitionists across the land.  

In more recent times, several contemporary artists have taken up this theme: weaving and waving the American flag in and out of their work.  It is not just a gimmick, and it does eliminate some of the clichés that surround the use of the American flag.  These pieces re-establish some of the flag’s symbolic potential and point to the irony that its use implies in these current times.  Three such artists are:  Sonya Clark, Donald Lipski, and Thornton Dial.  The descriptions written concerning these pieces, as well as the artists’ own statements provide lyrical interpretations regarding this work. 

Discussing the process of un-weaving, combining and re-weaving certain flags for an exhibition at the Craft in America Center in Los Angeles in 2020, Sonya Clark stated:  “We are at a chapter in our history that once again acknowledges how racial injustice is deeply woven into the fabric of this nation.  We are at a turning point. We must unravel those strands of injustice.”[ii] 

In an essay accompanying a Donald Lipski exhibition at the Fabric Workshop in 1991, the poet and critic John Yau observed:  “In his most recent work—Who’s Afraid of Red, White & Blue?—Lipski continues to apply a wide range of specific, usually repetitive processes, to the American flag.  In ‘Flag balls,’ with the help of others, he rolled thousands of yards of continuously printed flag material into giant spheres.  In doing so, he extends the process in which a flag achieves a greater dimension, reminding viewers that we are all part of a larger pattern.”[iii] 

And last, but not least, there is the very title that Thornton Dial chose for the piece included in his exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2003.  It beautifully summarizes and states the purpose of his work:  “Don’t matter how raggly the flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together.” 

So here is the entire poem, written by John Greenleaf Whittier, on the flag waving done by Miz Barbara Fritchie during the Civil War, interspersed with examples of these three contemporary American artists.                

Sonya Clark
“these days this history this country”
2019
Unwoven and rewoven commercially printed flags
(American & Confederate Battle Flags)
10” x 7”
Image © Sonya Clark, 2019

Barbara Frietchie

“Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,

Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall,—

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.”

Donald Lipsky
“Who’s Afraid of Red, White & Blue?  Flag Ball #2”
1990
Muslin 
(One of thirteen balls, each 32” in diameter)
Courtesy of The Fabric Workshop
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced: the old flag met his sight.

“Halt!”— the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
“Fire!”— out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word:

‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!’ he said.

All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!”[iv]

Thronton Dial
“Don’t matter how raggly the flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together“
2003
Mattress coils, chicken wire, clothing, can lids, found metal, plastic twine, wire, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on canvas on wood.
71” x 114” x 8”
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana

[i] Brockett, L. P. and Mary C. Vaughan; Woman’s Work in the Civil War: a Record of Heroism, Patriotism and Patience; Zeigler, McCurdy & Co.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1867; p. 10.

[ii] Clark, Sonya; From the artist’s statement for the “Democracy 2020 Exhibition:  Craft & the Election;” Craft in America Center; Los Angeles, California; 2020.

[iii] Stroud, Marion Boulton, et al; Donald Lipski:  Who’s Afraid of Red, White & Blue?; The Fabric Workshop; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1991; Unpagenated.

[iv] Whittier, John Greenleaf; “Barbara Frietchie;” The Atlantic Monthly; Boston, Massachusetts; October 1863. 

THE FLAYING OF MARSYAS

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It is a fabulously horrific depiction of the flaying of Marsyas as told in ancient times by the poet Ovid and painted late in the life of the Renaissance painter Titian.  Recent novelists such as Iris Murdoch and Evelyn Waugh have often mentioned the importance of this painting with regard to their own writing.  And, the painter Tom Phillips even included it in his official portrait of Murdoch, now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Titian may have kept this painting in his studio longer than usual, psychological reflections of an old man on his life, while employing those plastic and gestural movements, which keep a painting alive, even after years of work, over and over, on the same surface.  Titian painted “The Flaying of Marsyas” between 1570 and 1576.  Its patron is unknown. 

Titian
“Self Portrait”
1567
Oil on canvas
86 cm x 65 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Although in his “Lives of the Artists” Vasari does not mention this painting in particular, he does write about the working method that Titian used around this time.  He writes:  “…and these last works are executed with bold strokes and dashed off with a broad and even coarse sweep of the brush, insomuch that from near little can be seen, but from a distance they appear perfect….Although many believe that they are done without effort, in truth it is not so…for it is known that they are painted over and over again, and that he returned to them with his colours so many times, that the labour  may be perceived.  And this method, so used, is judicious, beautiful, and astonishing, because it makes pictures appear alive and painted with great art….”[i]

Titian
“The Flaying of Marsyas”
DETAIL (Inverted)

In the original telling of this ancient story, it was Marsyas the satyr, in his arrogance, who had challenged Apollo to a piping contest.  It was agreed that it would take place in the woods with an audience of those from both the woodlands and Olympus.  Afterwards all agreed that Apollo had easily won and that was it.  However, Apollo had been offended, and in his wrath, ordered the flaying of Marsyas.  This is how Ovid described it: 

“After the Theban had told this story about the demise of the Lycian
peasants, another recalled the horrible punishment
dealt to the Satyr who’d challenged Latona’s son to a piping
contest and lost.  ‘Don’t rip me away from myself!’ he entreated;
‘I’m sorry!’ he shouted between his shrieks, ‘Don’t flay me for piping!’
In spite of his cries, the skin was peeled from his flesh, and his body
was turned into one great wound; the blood was pouring all over him,
muscles were fully exposed, his uncovered veins convulsively
quivered; the palpitating intestines could well be counted,
and so could organs glistening through the wall of his chest.
The piper was mourned by the rustic fauns who watch over the woodlands,
his brother satyrs, the nymphs and Olympus, the pupil he loved
by all who tended their flocks or herds on the Lycian mountains.
Their tears dropped down and saturated the fertile earth,
who absorbed them deep in her veins and discharged them back into the air
in the form of a spring.  This found its way to the sea through a channel,
which took the name Marsyas, clearest of Phrygian rivers.”[ii]

Titian
“The Flaying of Marsyas”
1570-1576
Oil on canvas
212 cm x 207 cm
Archdiocesan Museum, Komeriz
The Czech Republic

In a more contemporary rendition of this story, the poet Robin Robertson includes an extended description of this ancient and mythical event.  Below are several selections from this larger ekphrastic piece:  a lyrical description of the scene on that day, specific instructions from the butcher to his two apprentices, illusions of bad tattoos as if lifted from the skin, and an allusion of a dismantled man, not unlike the anatomy of a painting and its skin, as a “disappointing pentimento.”   

THE FLAYING OF MARSYAS after Ovid

“A bright clearing. Sun among the leaves,
Sifting down to dapple the soft ground, and rest
a gilded bar against the muted flanks of trees.
In the flittering green light the glade
listens in and breathes.

A wooden pail; some pegs, a coil of wire;
A bundle of steel flensing knives.

Spreadeagled between two pines,
Hooked at each hoof to the higher branches,
tied to the root by the hands, flagged
as his own white cross,
the satyr Marsyas hangs.

Three stand as honour guard:
two apprentices, one butcher.”

“Let’s have a look at you, then.
Bit scrawny for a satyr,
all skin and whipcord, is it?
Soon find out.
So, think you can turn up with your stag-bones and outplay Lord Apollo?
This’ll learn you. Fleece the fucker.

Now. One of you on each side.
Blade along the bone, find the tendon,
nick it and peel, nice and slow.
A bit of shirt-lifting, now, to purge him,
pull his wool over his eyes
and show him Lord Apollo’s rapture;
pelt on one tree, him on another:
the inner man revealed.”

“Hanging Marsyas”
Marble
Height 2.56 m
Roman copy c. 150 AD based on an original Hellenistic
group created at the Pergamon during the late 3rd Century BC
Musee Louvre, Paris

“Red Marsyas. Marsyas ecorche,
splayed, shucked of his skin
in a tug and rift of tissue;
his birthday suit sloughed
the way a sodden overcoat is eased
off the shoulders and dumped.
All memories of a carnal life
lifted like a bad tattoo,
live bark from the vascular tree:
raw Marsyas unsheathed.

Or this: the shambles of Marsyas.
The dark chest meat marbled with yellow fat,
his heart like an animal breathing in its milky envelope,
the viscera a well-packed suitcase
of chitterlings, a palpitating tripe.
A man dismantled, a tatterdemalion
torn to steak and rind,
a disappointing pentimento
or the toy that can’t be re-assembled
by the boy Apollo, a raptor, vivisector.

The sail of stretched skin thrills and snaps
in the same breeze that makes his nerves
fire, his bare lungs scream.
Stripped of himself and from his twin:
the stiffening scab and the sticky wound.

Marsyas the martyr, a god’s fetish,
hangs from the tree like bad fruit.”[iii]

As a footnote to this subject:  the novelist Iris Murdoch was especially fond of this painting.  References to it are included in several of her novels, and when the artist Tom Phillips was commissioned to do her portrait for inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery in London, Murdoch suggested that a portion of the Titian painting be included in the background of her portrait.  And it was.

Tom Phillips
“Portrait of Iris Murdoch”
1987
Oil on canvas
36” x 28”
National Portrait Gallery, London

[i] Vasari, Giorgio; Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects; Everyman’s Library and Alfred A. Knopf; New York and Toronto; 1996; p. 794.   

[ii] Ovid; Metamorphoses:  Book 6 (Translated by David Raeburn); Penguin Classics; London, England; 2004; pp. 228-229, lines 382-400.

[iii] Robertson, Robin; A Painted Field; Harcourt Brace & Company; San Diego, New York, London; 1997; pp. 10-12.

THE SHIELD OF ACHELLES

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In ancient times, as these stories, tales, and histories were spoken and traded, collected and written down, it was Homer who ultimately composed the epic poem The Iliad.  In so doing, he chronicled the adventures of the Greek army, the sack of Troy and the heroic wanderings of the many participants across the seas. 

In one section especially, he described at length the great warrior Achilles as he was preparing for his battles in the Trojan Wars.  Achilles’ mother, Thetis, who had foreseen these upcoming events, commissioned the blacksmith Hêphaistos to forge a shield, with many layers and stories illuminated on its face.  He, Achilles, would have a choice of living a long life in peace and relative obscurity, or going into battle, with imminent death awaiting, but having his name become legendary.  We all know which of these paths he took.

It was Homer’s description of this amazing shield, going into great detail on all levels, which we accept today as the first and most important example of the ekphrastic tradition. In reading The Iliad over the years since that time, many artists and poets have tried to explicate these details, in both analytical and romantic ways.

“Then, running round the shield-rim, triple-ply,
he pictured all the might of the Ocean stream.”[i]

Alexander Pope
“Diagram for Achilles’ Shield” (MS 4808)
1712-1724
Pen and ink on paper
The British Library, London

In the eighteenth century Alexander Pope set out on a personal project to create a modern translation of Homer’s Iliad.  It stretched out over a twelve-year period, and he supported himself during this time by selling subscriptions to this as a series.  Along with this writing project, he attempted to reconstruct the design of Achilles’ shield, paying close attention to Homer’s descriptions.  The drawings and diagrams that he created are now in the manuscript collection of the British Library.  They give an excellent glimpse into this fictional work of art, and the Ocean stream that runs around its shield-rim.

Homer continues to describe the richness and imagination of the decoration for Achilles’ shield.  In the lines below he lays out the scheme for this project, including several realms and worlds in which the story takes place. 

                                                               “Durable
fine bronze and tin he threw into the blaze
with silver and with honorable gold,
then mounted a big anvil in his block
and in his right hand took a powerful hammer,
managing with his tongs in his left hand.” 

“His first job was a shield, a broad one, thick,
well-fashioned everywhere.  A shining rim
he gave it, triple-ply, and hung from this
a silver shoulder strap.  Five welded layers
composed the body of the shield.  The maker
used all his art adorning this expanse. 
He pictured on it earth, heaven, and sea,
unwearied sun, moon waxing, and the stars
that heaven bears for garland:  Plêiades,
Hyades, Orion in his might,
the Great Bear, too, that some have called the Wain,
pivoting there, attentive to Orion,
and unbathed ever in the Ocean stream.”[ii]  

Later in history, the artisan John Flaxman was commissioned by the firm of Rundell, Brigge & Rundell in London to take Homer’s description of this shield, using the original Greek text and Alexander Pope’s translation, and using his own illustrations to reconstruct this great work of art.  It includes all of the realms and landscapes as they are described, as well as the people and all of the characters as they interact, in both war and peace.  To our modern eye, and mind, this shield may have been beautiful, however, it also would have been huge, impossible for a single warrior to wield. 

John Flaxman (Commissioned by Philip Rundell)
“Shield of Achilles”
1821
Silver gilt
90.5 x 90.5 x 18.0 cm
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace,
United Kingdom

Coming closer to our own time, both W. H. Auden and Cy Twombly bring this imagery up to date.  A contemporary rendering of this story by Auden alternates shorter and longer lines in its retelling.  The following selected stanzas show Achilles’ mother, Thetis, looking over the shoulder of the blacksmith Hêphaistos during the process of the making of the shield.  She seems to be checking on its progress, with special attention to the inclusion of the many details that will go into this narrative. 

Auden however, sets a darker tone than the purely heroic one, including this description:  “An artificial wilderness and a sky like lead.”  Coming full circle, so to speak, the contemporary artist Cy Twombly re-visits this theme with a very energetic and abstract depiction of the shield.  Insane scribblings perhaps, yet they are lyrical and beautiful, graphic expressions with the pure kinetic energy that enlivens Achilles’ shield. 

The Shield of Achilles

“She looked over his shoulder
         For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-groomed cities
         And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
         His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
         And a sky like lead.” 

“She looked over his shoulder
         For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
         Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
         Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
         Quite another scene.” 

Cy Twombly
“Fifty Days at Iliam:  Shield of Achilles”
1978
Oil, crayon and graphite on canvas
75 1/2” x 67”
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“She looked over his shoulder
         For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
         Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
         But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
         But a weed-choked field.” 
“The thin-lipped armorer,
         Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
         Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
         To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
         Who would not live long.”[iii]

[i] Homer; The Iliad; Everyman’s Library and Alfred A. Knopf; New York, London and Toronto; 1992; p. 454, lines 607-608.

[ii] Homer; The Iliad; Everyman’s Library and Alfred A. Knopf; New York, London and Toronto; 1992; pp. 450-451, lines 479-497

[iii] Auden, W. H.; Collected Poems; Modern Library; New York, New York; 2007; pp. 594-596.

MUSA MCKIM AND RAYMOND CARVER: MODERN DETAILS

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Somehow in the course of events we have been led to believe that the ‘modern’ has come to mean only formalist abstraction and minimalism.  A smaller and smaller world defined by a very tight description.  There are however, several important modern writers and artists who have paid special attention to the details of modern life, seeing in them the larger world and how these details might speak to us. 

SUNDAY NIGHT
“Make use of the things around you. 
This light rain
Outside the window, for one. 
This cigarette between my fingers,
These feet on the couch. 
The faint sound of rock-and-roll,
The red Ferrari in my head. 
The woman bumping
Drunkenly around the kitchen . . .
Put it all in,
Make use.”[i]

“Don’t forget when the phone was off the hook
all day, every day.”[ii]   

“When, at 12:24, I look at the clock that isn’t running and it tells
the same time as the clock that is”[iii]   

As we read the above observations, both Musa McKim and Raymond Carver look directly at the world surrounding us:  a telephone lying off its hook, a broken alarm clock, a bag of sugar, or just the sun creating a glare on a sheet of white paper.  Many of the same things that would catch the eye of an artist.  The abstract form and shape of a grand piano, or the abstracted movement of a bird in space.  All are examples of minimal imagery with maximum power that both poets and painters would employ.

Brancusi’s sculpture, straight out of a folk tradition, but unrecognzable to the Parisian elite, later became the sophisticated form that synthesized beauty, abstraction and content.  There is the catch:  abstraction and content.  At first no one saw Brancusi’s pieces as birds, neither in space nor in flight.  Today, however, they have become a symbol of just that. 

Constantin Brancusi
“Bird in Space”
1928
Bronze
54” x 8 ½” x 6 ½”
Collection:  Museum of Modern Art, New York

Not unlike the sculpture of Brancusi, the orchestral pieces of Igor Stravinsky synthesized classical music with jazz, folk and even the primal. Traditional painting had also gone through a similar synthesis of realism, cubism and pure plastic painting. 

Arnold Newman
“Igor Stravinsky, New York City”
1946
Black & White Photograph
12 1/16” x 22 5/16”
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.

In the 1950’s and 60’s many young art students were taught by American abstract artists.  Process and abstraction formed the content of most of the work at that time.  But later, outside of academia, these artists were also confronted by the dilemma of what to do now?  They were well versed in process, but struggled to find content.  One artist however, set the  most impressive example.  Philip Guston at his Marlborough show in 1970  envisioned the end of one aspect of this process, and opened the gates and possibilities to new forms of imagery.  Making use of the things around him. 

By looking at certain details occurring in the world he single handedly opened the doors for himself, for poets, and later artists to come.  These included Clarke Coolidge, Musa McKim, Raymond Carver, Robert Moskowitz, Elizabeth Murray, Susan Rothenberg and more.

“I thought I would never write anything down again.  Then I put on my cold wristwatch.”[iv] 

Philip Guston in collaboration with Musa McKim
“I thought I would never write anything down again.”
(UNDATED)
Pen & ink drawing on paper
19” x 24”
The Estate of Musa Guston

In the mid 1960’s Robert Moskowitz produced a series of small paintings of a simple corner of a room.  Quiet, minimal, very abstract and infused with a new sense of content and space.  Where the simplest shape or form of a thing could clearly speak. 

He would later take this process, including both personal and universal images, and juxtapose them in subtle but provacotive ways.  A corner of the Flatiron Building, or the tops of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Towers, for example.  A simplified assortment of visual images, not unlike the sparse and provacotive language used by Raymond Carver and Musa McKim.

Robert Moskowitz
“Untitled (Empire State)”
1980 
Graphite and pastel on paper
106” x 31 1/4”
Collection:  Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Hoffman,
Dallas, Texas

“Talking about her brother Morris, Tess said: 
‘The night always catches him.  He never
believes it’s coming.’”[v]     

“When on TV I see my sister in a bit part in an old movie”[vi]   

“Three men and a woman in wet suits.  The door to their motel room is open and they are watching TV.”[vii]     

“And below in the street they are rattling the Coca-Cola bottles”[viii] 

Robert Moskowitz
“Painting (For Duke Ellington)”
1977
Oil on canvas
90” x 75”
Collection of Mary and Jim Parton, Great Falls, Virginia

His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes
“Duke Ellington riding in the back of his limo, somewhere
in Indiana.  He is reading by lamplight.  Billy Strayhorn
is with him, but asleep.  The tires hiss on the pavement. 
The Duke goes on reading and turning the pages.”[ix]

[i] Carver, Raymond; “Sunday Night,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 53.

[ii] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 66.

[iii] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 105.

[iv] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 121.

[v] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 64.

[vi] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 105.

[vii] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 65.

[viii] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 105.

[ix] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 66.

THE LAOCOÖN

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Nothing extraneous.  Everything working.  With muscles tense, movement over every inch of the surface, the figures themselves create the space in which they exist, taking the place of time. Timeless.

The Priest Laocoön was a seer in the Temple of Apollo.  He had two sons, Antiphas and Thymbraeus.  One story has him ostracized from the temple for breaking his vow of celibacy.  Another describes his ill-fated warning to the assembled people of Troy against accepting a suspicious gift from the army of Greece:  the Trojan horse.  In either case, it is an ancient Greek sculpture that brings this story to life.

 

lacoon1
Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus of Rhodes
“The Laocoön”
200 BC — 100 AD
Marble
6’ 10” x 5’ 4” x 3’ 8”
The Vatican Museum, Vatican City

“… Of our men
One group stood marveling, gaping to see
The dire gift of the cold unbedded goddess,
The sheer mass of the horse.”

“Build up a bonfire under it,
This trick of the Greeks, a gift no one can trust,
Or cut it open, search the hollow belly!”

“Contrary notions pulled the crowd apart.
Next thing we knew, in front of everyone,
Laocoön with a great company
Came furiously running from the Height,
And still far off cried out:  ‘O my poor people,
Men of Troy, what madness has come over you?
Can you believe the enemy truly gone?’”[i]

Writing in the Aeneid the poet Virgil related the story of Laocoön’s warning to his fellow citizens, the subsequent sack of Troy, and that infamous horse.  Laocoön, sensing the horse to be hollow, struck it with his spear, echoing both inside and out.  So either Apollo, or Minerva, sent serpents in retaliation for Laocoön’s warnings and his defiance of the gods.  The research, dating, and other historical facts surrounding the telling of this story and the creation of the sculpture are, however, confusing.

Pliny the Elder attributed the commission of this sculpture to a team of three artists from Rhodes:  Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus.  They worked together seamlessly, interlacing the figures and serpents into a dynamic whole.  It was thought to have been completed between 200 BC and 100 AD but those dates continue to be debated.

The original work was buried and lost after being in the Palace of Titus around 79-81 AD. It was later rediscovered during an excavation in early 1506 and brought immediately to Pope Julius II who had it placed in the Vatican Collection.  His Holiness requested Michelangelo, who was working in Rome at the time, to inspect this newly discovered example of classical sculpture.  Upon seeing “The Laocoön” Michelangelo declared it to be the most beautiful example he had seen from ancient times.

At first “The Laocoön” was attributed to the Romans as a copy from a lost original.  Later it was theorized that it was not Roman, but truly a classical Greek composition.  This debate continued without much clarification until the historian Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote an explication of this sculpture in his “Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry” in 1766.  Lessing describes this sculpture and looks deeply into it, while simultaneously analyzing Virgil’s poem.

These art historical speculations pose a problem for the student of ekphrastics:  if it had been created earlier, then Virgil may have actually seen it and been inspired to write his account in the Aeneid.  However, if it had really been a Roman composition, then it was much later than Virgil, and possibly an illustration of his telling of this story.

In any event, Lessing’s descriptions and speculations are in themselves important examples of the ekphrastic tradition.  His observations search the surfaces of this piece of marble and look deeply into its meaning.  Describing a facial feature in one example, and then writing regarding the anguish coming from behind the mask, Lessing gives us a meditation on the expressive possibilities in a work of art.

 

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Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodoros of Rhodes
“The Laocoön”
(DETAIL)

“Virgil’s Laocoön cries out, but this screaming Laocoön is the same man whom we already know and love as a prudent patriot and loving father.  We do not relate his cries to his character, but solely to his unbearable suffering.  It is this alone which we hear in them, and it was only by this means that the poet could convey it clearly to our senses.”[ii]

Lessing’s observations address the processes of both seeing and writing.  In his essay he searches for significant details that are employed for creative expression and he, himself, debates the use of these details in order to tell the entire story.  Which elements will work for the poet?  Which ones for the artists?

“It is claimed that representation in the arts covers all of visible nature, of which the beautiful is but a small part.  Truth and expression are art’s first law, and as nature herself is ever ready to sacrifice beauty for the sake of higher aims, so must the artist subordinate it to his general purpose and pursue it no further than truth and expression permit.  It is enough that truth and expression transform the ugliest aspects of nature into artistic beauty.”[iii]

 

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Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodoros of Rhodes
“The Laocoön”
(VERSO)

“The idea of having the father and his two sons connected in one entanglement by means of the deadly serpents is undeniably an inspired one and gives evidence of a highly artistic imagination.  Whose was it, the poet’s or the artists’?”[iv]

“But only that which gives free rein to the imagination is effective.  The more we see, the more we must be able to imagine.  And the more we add in our imaginations, the more we must think we see.”[v]

Early in the summer of 2017, during a visit to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Cité de Paris, I came upon the following statement on one of the information tags in an exhibition and copied it down in my notebook:

“Tout l’art du passe, de toutes les époques, de tout les civilisations surgit devant moi, tout est simultané comme si l’espace prenait la place du temps.”
—Alberto Giacometti, 1965[vi]

This led me back to a book of “Interpretive Drawings” by Alberto Giacometti that included two of his drawings from “The Laocoön.”  In English his statement reads:  “In all art of the past, of all eras, and all civilizations that came before me, all share a common vision in which space takes the place of time.”[vii]

 

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Alberto Giacometti
“Laocoon, after a statue in the Vatican Museum”
1952Ballpoint pen drawing
11 1/2” x 8 1/4”
Annette and Alberto Giacometti Foundation,
Paris and Zurich

Not only did Alberto Giacometti go to this source in reference to the old masters, so did James Joyce when Stephen Dedalus comments on this very story in Ulysses:  “Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope.”[viii]

And this is how Virgil described Laocoön’s confrontation with this beast:

“…Some crookedness
Is in this thing.  Have no faith in the horse!
Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring gifts
I fear them, gifts and all.”

“He broke off then
And rifled his big spear with all his might
Against the horse’s flank, the curve of the belly.
It stuck there trembling, and the rounded hull
Reverberated groaning at the blow.”[ix]

 

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Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodoros of Rhodes
“The Laocoon”
200 BC — 100 AD
Marble
6’ 10” x 5’ 4” x 3’ 8”
The Vatican Museum, Vatican City

“…. But straight ahead
They slid until they reached Laocoön.
Twining about and feeding on the body.
Next they ensnared the man as he ran up
With weapons:  coils like cables looped and bound him
Twice round the middle; twice about his throat
They wipped their back-scales, and their heads towered,
While with both hands he fought to break the knots,
Drenched in slime, his head-hands black with venom,
Sending to heaven his appalling cries
Like a slashed bull escaping from an altar,
The fumbled axe shrugged off.  The pair of snakes
Now flowed away and made for the highest shrines,
The citadel of pitiless Minerva,
Where coiling they took cover at her feet
Under the rondure of her shield.  New terrors
Ran in the shaken crowd:  the word went round
Laocoön had paid, and rightfully,
For profanation of the sacred hulk
With his offending spear hurled at its flank.”[x]

 

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Alberto Giacometti
“Head of Laocoön”
1952Ballpoint pen drawing
11 1/2” x 8 1/4”
Annette and Alberto Giacometti Foundation,
Paris and Zurich

[i] Virgil; The Aeneid; (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald); Vintage Classics and Random House; New York, New York; 1990; BOOK II, Lines 42-45 & 52-61, p. 34.

[ii] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon:  An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; The Johns Hopkins University Press; Baltimore and London; 1984; p. 24.

[iii] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon:  An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; p. 19.

[iv] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon:  An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; p. 35.

[v] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon:  An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; p. 19.

[vi] Carluccio, Luigi; Giacometti:  A Sketchbook of Interpretive Drawings; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; New York, New York; 1967. Giacometti’s statement regarding these drawings led me to revisit this book of his drawings copied from many historic works of art.

[vii] From an e-mail correspondence between this writer and Dr. Rosalie Vermette, Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Paris, France, and Professor Emerita, School of Liberal Arts, Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis, 22 May 2018.  

[viii] Joyce, James; Ulysses; Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf; New York, London, Toronto; 1934 & 1997; p. 301.

[ix] Virgil; The Aeneid; (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald); BOOK II, Lines 67-75, p. 35.

[x] Virgil; The Aeneid; (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald); BOOK II, Lines 290-310, p. 41.