Designing Architecture for Art

Last week, I was privileged to participate in the end-of-semester critique for an undergraduate class on sacred space in the Catholic University’s School of Architecture. I had already met the students and most of the other jurors earlier in the semester, when, along with Julio Bermudez’s graduate students, they showed their concepts for a hypothetical, twelve-person monastery situated between the C&O canal and the Potomac River, near what is actually the popular site for picnickers, cyclists, and kayakers known as Fletcher’s Boathouse,. Some reflections and pictures from that experience are in my October 3 posting, Sacred Space. 

Catholic University School of Architecture
students preparing for a jury

In planning the undergraduate project for the remainder of the semester, Luis Boza, was intrigued with the idea that the monks might create a Center for the Arts and Religion nearby. Using our actual mission statement as a starting place, Professor Boza assigned a brief to design a 25,000 square foot building that would be just up the river from the monastery, to house a gallery, an art library, a café, and studio spaces. In assigning the project, he wrote

Architecture is a communicative medium; a language in which meaning is transmitted through the physicality of objects in space. Our physical and sensory experiences are translated through acute interpretations of scale, proximity, perspective, materials, and form. Light, however, is the medium that reveals what is hidden and ultimately, illuminates our visual experience. As such, Light, with its ethereal variation can orchestrate the intensity of the architectural experience. The perceptual essence and metaphysical strength of architecture is driven by qualities of light and shadow as shaped by solids and voids, by opacities, transparencies and translucencies.

Light is particularly important in exhibition and studio spaces. Painters, particularly, are sensitive to not only the direction of the light, but also to its color. The appearance of pigments, and therefore the color harmonies within a painting, can be dramatically different when seen by unfiltered daylight than when illuminated by yellow incandescent bulbs. Even the color of walls will affect perception, as light is reflected and refracted from every surface. Sculptures often need strong side lighting to bring out their contours, accentuating the difference between heights and depths. In a gallery, an exhibition that may be seem drab and unexciting will come to life when fully lit. 

The ten talented and dedicated third-year students had clearly grown in their ability to think about the relationship between light and space. One created a complex of layered boxes around a central courtyard, a modernist interpretation of the Gothic cathedral as the multi-roomed City of God. Another included a dark-walled interior space for the exhibition of digital art, featuring an intriguing system of ceiling perforations that could be adjusted to admit light in pixellated patterns. A third designed a screen to cover the entire glass-walled building, controlling the amount of light that entered each space through small, round openings that differed in density, just as ben-day dots control the amount of pigment on a half-toned page. 

The other jurors were especially interested in the poetics of the spaces the students presented, asking questions about the relationship of building and river, the processional movement of people as they approach entries and vistas, the changing aspect of spaces and voids in the annual cycle of seasons. I found myself more grounded in practical matters, like the need for freight elevators for moving artworks up to top-floor galleries; flexible, directional lighting in all exhibition spaces; and pinnable walls and convenient sources of water in workshops and studios, to name just a few. The faculty members reassured me that next semester the students would be brought down to earth, learning to grapple with such things as building code compliance, accessibility for people with disabilities, and similar constraints. In the meanwhile, these intelligent, thoughtful, committed young people give me hope for a future in which light is both metaphor and physical property, giving shape to their own boxes of miracles.

"Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time" Revisited

This past Saturday was the opening reception and artist’s talk for Beneath the Old Masters: Evolution & Process, Woodcuts by Trudi Y. Ludwig, at the Washington Printmakers Gallery in Silver Spring, Maryland. I’ve been watching Trudi’s masterful image, The Exposure of Luxury, emerge from the wood for most of the year. Indeed, right before I left for Chicago, I saw the finished plate. Even so, I was unprepared for the breathtaking sight that greeted me as I came up the entry stairs into the gallery. There, filling the entire visual space, not one, but four versions of intertwined skeletal forms danced and floated before my eyes, daring me to choose which one spoke most strongly.

Four Versions of The Exposure of Luxury

I leave it to the printmakers to talk about the technical specifications of papers and ink. For me, it was simply a delight to contemplate the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between a print made on stark, white paper; one made on the soft, fibrous side of another paper with a yellower, more bone-like cast; a third pulled on the harder, less porous side of that same, cream-colored substrate, and embellished with gold leaf; and, in mirror image, the inky black of the actual plywood plate. On each of the hand-printed sheets, the marks of the baren evoked clouds and memories, as if the bones had emerged from dreams rather than from the tedious, hard physical labor of carving into plywood for hundreds of hours.

It was also a delight to hear Trudi talk about her process, revealing her ideas about art and life just as her astonishing, life-sized prints reveal the underlying structures of works of art by those we often refer to as “old masters.” Other works in the show included a reprinting of a block originally cut in 2000, Prima Veritas, showing the bones under Botticelli’s three Primavera Graces; the skeletal underpinnings of Rodin’s Thinker, titled Nosce Te Ipsum (Know Thyself) from 2005; and That Mystic Smile (Mona Revisited) from 2002. As she spoke in multi-layered puns and double entendres, the works became ever more resonant, exposing the essential truth that bones support every one of our living bodies, no matter how luxurious our outer trappings. These exquisite networks of shape and form are a testament to luxury of a different kind than that depicted in the Bronzino work that inspired Trudi’s newest prints. They neither exploit nor bemoan the decadent, transient pleasures of the flesh. Rather, they revel in the luxury of time to work in the studio, time to think and to pray, time to remember that we are more than just our skin and bones, we are also spirit, dancing eternally with the God before whom all are equal, and all are beautiful.

A Thanksgiving Feast

Last week, after the AAR/SBL extravaganza of meetings, papers, and conversations with friends, I found myself with an extra day in Chicago all to myself. Naturally, I spent a good portion of it at the Art Institute, which was only a few blocks away from my hotel. 

I often find going to museums overwhelming. There is so much to see, so much to take in, that I am tempted to rush from one thing to another rather than to allow things to speak to me. As I wandered through the Modern wing of the Art Institute, I thought about James Elkins’ book, Pictures and Tears: A History of People who have Cried Before Paintings. While I wasn’t exactly weeping, several works did stop me in my tracks, as they called forth a certain aching in my heart that I associate with the experience of beauty. 

I was particularly surprised to feel this way in front of four paintings by German artist Gerhard Richter. Done in 1989, each has the title Ice, followed by numbers 1 through 4 in parentheses. All of them are 80 inches high by 64 inches wide, hung side by side along a wall immediately across from the entry into the room. Beautiful is not usually a word I associate with Richter’s work, which generally challenges notions of identity, meaning, and reality. Many of his works reference documentary photographs or prints or paintings by other artists, altering them in ways that make them almost – but not quite – unrecognizable. These Ice paintings, though, were completely abstract, reveling in the materiality of paint just as much as any mid-20^th century abstract expressionist. And I was captivated, close to tears.

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/146994?search_no=1&index=1

Some indeterminate amount of time later, after looking at a lot of art that left me intellectually curious but emotionally cold, I came around a corner to see what looked like the root of an immense tree. This was a familiar sight, as it was only a few days after the passage of Hurricane Sandy, which pulled many trees in my neighborhood out of the ground.

But this was no ordinary uprooted tree. It was a dream of a tree, an artificial construction that reproduced the gnarled branches and knots, the rough bark and smooth planes, but also revealed the trace of human hands. The artist, Charles Ray, called it Hinoki, which is the name of a particular kind of cypress tree that grows only in Japan. In his statement, Ray described a fallen tree that he had seen in a meadow off the California coast. The tree haunted his imagination, until he finally decided to make a life-sized sculpture of it. He writes,

Silicone molds were taken and a fiberglass version of the log was reconstructed. This was sent to Osaka, Japan, where master woodworker Yuboku Mukoyoshi and his apprentices carved my vision into reality using Japanese cypress (hinoki). I was drawn to the woodworkers because of their tradition of copying work that is beyond restoration. In Japan, when an old temple or Buddha can no longer be maintained, it is remade.[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/189207]

Thus, the old, dead tree was remade out of new wood, and released into the world. All alone in its shrine-like room, softly lit by an entire wall of windows, it smelled of hewn cypress and sandalwood.  Like the paintings called Ice I had seen earlier, this art melted my heart and filled my eyes. And for this feast of sight and smell, I give thanks.

A Monotype Workshop

Cyndi Wish talking about making stencils

Early this morning, printmakers Cyndi Wish and Cecilia Rossey led a workshop in our studio for Trudi’s students and anyone else that wanted to show up. The first thing that I learned is that printmakers distinguish between a monotype, which has some repeatable elements in the form of stencils, plates, linoleum blocks, or other matrices; and a monoprint, which is completely free-form and unrepeatable.
 

The next thing I learned is that a matrix can be made from just about anything. The pages of illustrated children’s books are particularly good, since they often are fairly stiff and the commercial printing process gives them a coating that allows them to stand up to repeated runs through the press. Plastic and Mylar are good too, but they are harder on blades.

As Cyndi laid out inks and began to work, the conversation shifted—as it often does in the studio—between technical information about printmaking and more general observations about life and art. Here are a few scraps that I was able to jot down.

Cyndi Wish, Cis Rossey, and Trudi Ludwig

Cyndi:  “I am not a goal oriented person. I am a process artist, a community artist. I enjoy working in the studio and having a chance to talk with people about it.”

 Cis: “If God gave you a voice it is your responsibility to use it. In art it is also sharing with community.” 

Cyndi: “Behind every piece of art or music or writing is a person who once felt shy about it.

Cis: “There is no really right way once you become a developed artist. you need to learn technique but can choose how to use it.”

Early prints in the series

Cyndi: “Stencils or matrices are words in a visual language that can be reworked into a series. You start to develop a cohesive body of work, a series, without even trying. I could do this all day.” 

Meanwhile, Cyndi worked steadily, layering images of whirling lines, words like “but” and “and,” and butterfly shapes cut into linoleum blocks. Soon, a table was filled with prints, all related to one another, yet no two the same.

According to What?

Last week was so full that I never quite managed to write about all the art that filled my time. One of the moments that lifted my spirits was a walk through “According to What?” a retrospective look at the work of Ai Weiwei. Filling an entire floor of the Hirshhorn Museum, the show includes a selection of 98 black-and-white photographs from the Chinese artist’s life in New York from 1983 to 1993; sculptural works incorporating materials as diverse as bicycles, stools, storage chests, pearls, tea, and ancient clay vessels; videos; and many large, inkjet prints applied like wallpaper not only the gallery walls but also covering enough of the floor that visitors are forced to walk on them.

Nothing that I have read about Ai Weiwei gives me any indication of his religious beliefs, or even if he has any. What is clear is that there is no distinction in his mind between his art and his life, and that for him, both life and art have a profoundly moral dimension. As the Directors’ Foreword to the catalog of this exhibition states,

Despite being beaten and detained by Chinese officials in his hotel room in 2009, which resulted in a head injury that ultimately required emergency surgery, as well as his arrest and confinement for eighty-one days in 2011, the artist remains through his art and actions to be an advocate for open dialogue and human rights issues. In his artwork, he continues to raise crucial questions about the right to express and conduct oneself freely, about accountability, and about the value of individual lives.

Many of the artworks in this show are also stunningly, hauntingly beautiful while asking disturbing questions about the complex relationships between old and new, history and progress, creativity and authenticity. Two that reference the map of China are made from dark, sensuous ironwood, reclaimed from Qing Dynasty temples that have been dismantled to make way for the new construction documented in the large inkjet photographs. Another work consists of 16 Han Dynasty vases, dating from about 200 BCE to 220 CE, which the artist has altered by dipping them in ordinary industrial paint. A nearby wall text asks,

So-called creative behaviors always accompany the issue of “authentic” and “original.” It may be the most important core question, whether a work is original or authentic. And this issue may well be the main point for contemporary art. People are looking for something new. But what on earth is something new? And what is the method of making something new? Can it be fake and at the same time authentic?

Near the end of the exhibition, 40 tons of steel rebar are piled along the floor, carefully laid in a pattern that looks like an empty riverbed, or a fissure in the earth. Each of the carefully-straightened pieces was recovered from schoolhouses that collapsed in an earthquake in Sichuan in 2008. Not far away, near the escalators that carry visitors into and out of the exhibit, large sheets of paper that look like a ledger book notes the names, ages, class, and gender of over 5000 child victims of that earthquake as a disembodied voice reads the names aloud.

Ai Weiwei asks deep questions of both art and life. What is real? What is important? What is really worth doing? Whatever the artist may say about his religious inclinations, these are profoundly spiritual questions that all of us must ultimately answer. Lately, Ai Weiwei has been giving his life and his art to discovering the truth about his government's attempts to hide its own activities against its citizens. To what am I giving my life and art?

Any Art in a Storm

Since I live and work in Washington, DC, relatives and friends from non-hurricane parts of the world have been calling and emailing, asking how we weathered the Big Storm. Although the seminary where I work was closed for two days, I find myself a little embarrassed to say that not much happened in my neighborhood except a lot of rain and wind. In accounts of the devastation in New Jersey and New York, and extended power outages and fallen trees and crushed roofs in the DC suburbs, art is probably pretty low on the list of people’s priorities in the aftermath of the storm. The Red Cross is busy providing drinking water, sandwiches, and a warm, dry place to stay, not worrying about aesthetics.

BELEIF + DOUBT at the Hirshhorn

 

But art isn’t just about pretty things. Art is a way of thinking about the world. Last week, I stopped in at the Hirshhorn Museum to take a look at Barbara Kruger’s remarkable installation, BELIEF+DOUBT. It’s in the newly-redesigned basement level, where every inch of the walls, floor, ceiling, even the undersides of the escalators, is covered with printed vinyl. For many years, Kruger has been using the tools of advertising to ask hard questions about the relationships between wealth and poverty, power and oppression, need and desire. In 1989, she worked with commercial sign painters to create an untitled mural on the side of what was then known as the Temporary Contemporary (now the Geffen Contemporary) in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles. A review in the Los Angeles Times describes it like this:

Nearly three stories high and more than two-thirds the length of a football field, the commercially painted mural is hard to miss. So is its composition, which approximates the American flag. The upper left corner is a blue rectangle with white letters that announce: "MOCA at the Temporary Contemporary." The remainder is a red field whose white sentences divide the expanse into visual stripes.

The chosen composition obviously flags MOCA for the passer-by, but it also evokes something more subtle and provocative. Such public buildings as courthouses, post offices and city halls are typically the ones that fly the flag out front. Kruger's flag-mural insists that the art museum be counted as a place for important public business, too--the business of expressive thought, enacted in the social context of a public place.
 

Call it street democracy in action. In four lines of simple text, Kruger's mural poses nine direct questions: Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is free to choose? Who does time? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last? [http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-04/entertainment/ca-271_1_barbara-kruger-s-artwork]

WHOSE BODY?

A photo by Gary Leonard of National Guard troops in front of the mural following the trial of Rodney Kind in 1992 in Los Angeles adds another layer of meaning to the artist’s questions. It can be seen on the Museum of Contemporary Art’s website at http://www.moca.org/audio/blog/?p=3159.

WHOSE BELIEFS?

At the Hirshhorn more than twenty years later, Kruger continues to question our values, our unspoken assumptions, our unreflective behaviors. On the floor under one escalator, she writes, IT'S A SMALL WORLD BUT NOT IF YOU HAVE TO CLEAN IT. Under the other, the words are THE WORLD SHRINKS FOR THOSE WHO OWN IT. Between large letters that insist BELIEVE ANYTHING FORGET EVERY THING, a smaller sign proclaims GIVE YOUR BRAIN AS MUCH ATTENTION AS YOU DO YOUR HAIR AND YOU’LL BE A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER OFF! and another asks WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU LAUGHED?

WHOSE POWER?

As thought-provoking as each aphorism or question is on its own, the cumulative effect of all those huge letters is overwhelming.  As I walked through the space, craning my neck and peering around corners, trying to keep track of where I was and what I was seeing, it felt like the antidote to the ads that tell me what I should buy or think or do whenever I read a newspaper or magazine, watch a movie or television show, listen to the radio, or even walk down the street. In the relentless storm of commercial messages that increasingly fill our lives, this art asks questions that have less to do with aesthetics than with the underlying realities of life.