Suzanne C. Ouellette
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Sending Out Poems:  The Backstory

2/22/2021

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     One day before the COVID pandemic struck and shut down New York City, we arrived in Mexico, in San Miguel de Allende, for what was to have been our annual month long stay.  Given growing health risks in New York, the seemingly lower risk in Mexico, and the generosity of friends, we decided to extend our time.  We were in Mexico until early June, nearly two months longer than planned.  

     As a way of keeping in contact with friends and family while we were away from home, within our first week, I began sending out daily poems to people through email.  The launch was set by a group email from my friend, Michelle Fine, who wrote to current and former friends and family of the CUNY Graduate Center to check in on how we all were doing.  I responded to her and her full list with a poem.  Since then, the list of "Poetry Friends" has grown and nearly 350 poems and wise words have been delivered.  The poetry posting has become an important part of my morning ritual, a very rewarding way of being in contact with others during this very difficult time we are all struggling to get through.

     From time to time, I plan to post on this blog selections from the daily emails (I promise, not too many), as a way of keeping a record.  Today, I share some very favorite early poems from Mexico.
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The Undertaking
 
The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.
There you are - cased in clean bark you drift
through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.
You are free. The river films with lilies,
shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now
all fear gives way: the light
looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill
as arms widen over the water; Love

the key is turned. Extend yourself -
it is the Nile, the sun is shining,
everywhere you turn is luck.
 
                                                     – Louise Glück
 
 
In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens
 
The sky is open
all the way.
Workers upright on the line
like spokes.
I know there is a river somewhere,
lit, fragrant, golden mist, all that,
whose irrepressible birds
can’t believe their luck this morning
and every morning.
I let them riot
in my mind a few minutes more
before the news comes.
 
                            – Molly Brodak (1980-2020)
 
 
In a world of grief and pain,
Flowers bloom.
Even then. 
  • Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)



Goodbye to Tolerance 
Genial poets, pink-faced   
earnest wits--
you have given the world   
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.   
Goodbye, goodbye,
                            I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,   
neutral fellows, seers of every side.   
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.
 
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.
 
It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
 
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,   
your loaves grow moldy,   
a gulf has split
                     the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again--
unless you leap it, leaving   
behind you the cherished   
worms of your dispassion,   
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,   
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle   
for joy ...
 
Denise Levertov
 
 
 
What Issa Heard
Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.
I heard them too, this morning, which must mean,
since we will always have a suffering world,
we must also always have a song.
 
  • David Budbill
 
 
The World Has Need of You
                             everything here
                             seems to need us
                                         —Rainer Maria Rilke
 
I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple.
                               – Ellen Bass
 
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Winter:  A Very Evocative Season

2/15/2021

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Mannikin in Snow. Oil painting by John Singer Sargent.
PicturePhotograph of Paris in winter.







Along with paintings and photographs, there are many beautiful poems about Winter.  Among them are some that go straight to the heart and soul.  They bring back wonderful memories and evoke strong yearnings.  A few of these are posted here.

Ice
By Gail Mazur

In the warming house, children lace their skates,   
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.   
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white
and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’   
hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour
of distances moved backwards without falling,

then—twilight, the warming house steamy   
with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep   
playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,
a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide
arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never
be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her
in circles outside the emptied rink forever?


February Evening in New York
by Denise Levertov

As the stores close, a winter light
    opens air to iris blue,
    glint of frost through the smoke
    grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk.

As the buildings close, released autonomous   
    feet pattern the streets
    in hurry and stroll; balloon heads
    drift and dive above them; the bodies   
    aren't really there.

As the lights brighten, as the sky darkens,
    a woman with crooked heels says to another woman   
    while they step along at a fair pace,
    "You know, I'm telling you, what I love best   
    is life. I love life! Even if I ever get
    to be old and wheezy—or limp! You know?   
    Limping along?—I'd still ... " Out of hearing.   

To the multiple disordered tones
    of gears changing, a dance
    to the compass points, out, four-way river.   
    Prospect of sky
    wedged into avenues, left at the ends of streets,   
    west sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range   
    of open time at winter's outskirts.


Dusk in Winter
by W.S. Merwin
​

The sun sets in the cold without friends
Without reproaches after all it has done for us
It goes down believing in nothing
When it has gone I hear the stream running after it
It has brought its flute it is a long way





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Poetry on a Snow Day

2/2/2021

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The Snow-Storm
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.


Snow Day
By Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,   
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost   
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,   
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,   
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,   
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.   
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,   
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,   
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,   
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear--

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School   
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,   
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,   
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,   
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.


Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
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Letting Art Fill in Photography’s Gaps:  Images of Sabina Spielrein

2/10/2020

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As I described in the prior blog post, I am on the lookout for art that will supplement the little photographic evidence we have about Sabina Spielrein.  Felix Vallotton (1865-1925), printmaker and painter, is the artist most helpful to me so far in my search for art that expresses Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942) — art that represents something of her way of being in the world. They are contemporaries. While Vallotton makes his art in France, all the following happens for Sabina: She journeys from a troubled childhood in Russia, undergoes treatment for psychiatric symptoms in Switzerland; and, most importantly, establishes an impressive career in psychiatry and psychoanalysis as a scholar and therapist in Zurich, Vienna, Berlin, Geneva, and Moscow. The year of Vallotton’s death coincides with Sabina’s return to Rostov, the Russian city of her birth.

The scene Vallotton gives us in his 1897 woodblock print, Money , from the series he titled, Intimacies, is full of ambiguity. What is going on here and what does it have to do Sabina? 
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The print invites the viewer to fill in her own explanation of the scene. For me, the woman at the left edge of the print is Sabina. She stands at an open window at the Burgholzli hospital where she was admitted just a few months earlier in a highly anxious state. She is calm now and looks to the light outside. She is perhaps a little apprehensive, but mostly, she is optimistic. She sees a world outside that will provide opportunities to put to good use the brilliance she is sure she possesses.  She sees possibilities to actualize the special calling she knows she is destined for.

At the same time that she looks into the light, Sabina looks away from the large mass of darkness to her left (our right). That darkness contains memories of her troubled childhood, including abuse by her father whose love she sought. The darkness also holds those negative ideas and feelings she has long carried about terrible things yet to happen in her life. The window seems a way out of the darkness, yet the darkness encroaches her space.

At the leading edge of the black mass that takes over most of the print is a man. For me, that man is Carl Jung. He engages Sabina in a conversation. Part of that talk may be helpful to her. He stands with Sabina at the window, he may be encouraging her to engage with life and work outside the clinic. Nonetheless, he is an ominous figure. As I look at him, taking over a little too much of Sabina’s space, I cannot help but think of the harm and injustice in his close sensual relationship with Sabina. That happened when she was his young vulnerable patient and he was her older married physician. Sabina writes that she both loved and hated Jung. In her diary and letters, she records many ways he rejected her and sought to limit her possibilities. He is indeed part of the darkness she seeks to escape.

​In the second 1897 print, The Symphony, Vallotton shows us a young woman who sits and performs at a grand piano. Half of the print is taken up with her serious playing. At the left are a group of men who look at her and listen. It is an updated Susanna and the Elders image: Older men observe and leer at a beautiful young woman. 

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For me, the young woman is again Sabina. Although she was a skilled pianist and had a life-long love of music, she was not a concert pianist. Sabina did, however, perform and deliver papers at important psychoanalytic meetings. Just replace the piano with a meeting table or a conference podium. She was often the only or one of the very few women present. For me, the men in the print represent members of Freud’s psychoanalytic circle and other analysts, The men may have asked her to perform/give the lecture, but their response seems mixed. The motley assortment of faces expresses attentive interest but also boredom and anger. At the top of the heap is a man who pulls at his beard with eyes closed (how can one not see Freud in this figure?). The apparent leader is silent. That is as it should be as she plays, but I want him to speak when she finishes. I want him to praise her and to encourage his colleagues to recognize her contributions.

We know that Freud invited Sabina to give a paper to the Vienna psychoanalytic circle early in her career. That was probably one of her first major presentation to the group of specialists, essentially all men. Most of those present were critical of her work, finding it difficult to integrate her unique theories and accept that a “little girl” could make serious contributions. Freud was too distracted to bring some sense and order to their responses. He saw the brilliance in her
paper but was too distracted by fears that her ideas might not support his own to give her the appreciation she was due.
The Vienna episode was one of many times that Sabina’s distinctive ideas and hard work to advance psychoanalysis as a science were dismissed and overlooked by others.


The third Vallotton piece is a 1909 painting titled Box Seats at the Theater: The Gentleman and the Lady. It shares many of the themes offered by the first two works — the ominous man (is he Sabina’ s father? Is he Jung?), the young woman looking out into a lighted area, the darkness that looms behind the woman. 

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There are new ideas here too. Sabina seems trapped here. What should be simply the edge of the box seats over which she looks to see the theater action below appears as a thick wall that pens her in. The man is more her keeper than her play going companion. Sabina here seems on the wrong and worrisome side of things.

And there is the color in the painting. When I read what Sabina wrote and what others have written about her, I see her world in black and white, maybe occasionally some grey and brown, but mostly black and white. So, how is it that this colorful painting speaks to me of her? I think it is because that yellow is a pretty scary color. That color says that, in this world, something is dreadfully wrong or about to be dreadfully wrong. The color reflects the fear and worry in Sabina’s face and the premonitions she carried in her head and heart.

Also a contemporary of Sabina’s was the German painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938). This is his 1911 painting, Russian Dancer Mela. 

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What does this image allow me to write about Sabina? It is highly doubtful that Sabina ever danced in this way or that she ever wore anything like this costume.  Nonetheless, there is something about the aloneness of this figure that I connect with the way Sabina was in all of the settings of her life.  She is out there, on the stage, all by herself.  Also, there is a drive and determination in this woman’s presentation that I think Sabina had.  She is out there, on the stage, working very, very hard. And she looks right at us as she does her work.  As I wrote in the prior blog about images of Sabina, we seem to have only two images of her as an adult. The two are fuzzy but in both, we see her looking directly at us. In the look, she seems to be saying that important line that she wrote about herself: “I too was once a human being. My name was Sabina Spielrein.” Not only does she look at us directly, she looked at hard work, loss, disappointment, and death directly.
​

The final artist who helped me imagine Sabina more fully than the available photographs was a surprise. At an exhibit of a contemporary Japanese artist that I went to simply to learn more about how current artists use traditional Japanese painting techniques, I was stopped in my tracks by this very large painting done in 2011. 

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The artist, Eri Iwasaki, calls this Rain Clouds. A woman holds her head above the weather. Sabina is the central figure. She holds her head above all of the interpersonal, professional, societal, cultural, and political “rains” that fall around her. At their most extreme, those rains include the Nazis who in 1942 massacred the Jews of Rostov-on-Don in Russia. Sabina and her two daughters were among the at least 13,000 Jews shot and thrown into mass graves on that one day. The darkness in her life is not simply to her right, to her left, behind her, and below her. It falls down upon her.

In this image, Sabina does not look directly out at us. She looks to her left, over and beyond us. Maybe there, she sees possibilities and opportunities. We need follow her sight line and the work that she left behind to discover what hope she might have seen.
​

Iwasaki says about this piece: “We all change constantly in response to the environment where we find ourselves...swayed by the state of our mind and heart. Depending on the nature of that heart, our meager existence can inspire great hope.” I think Sabina Spielrein had one of those hearts.

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Art Fills Photography’s Gaps:  What To Do When There are No Photos of Sabina Spielrein

1/26/2020

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We live with photographs always at hand. All our media sources are filled with peoples’ pictures, friends and family are constantly sending us pictures of themselves, we have selfies; and, of course, there are Facebook and Instagram images showing us how so many of us look, in so many places, at so many times. It is distressing now when we can’t find an image of another person.

​This is a blog about a woman with an exceptionally sparse photographic record and a story of how I tried to make up for that lack by creating an image of her through the art of her time and my own.  First, I will write something about who the woman was and then I will share images of paintings and prints that I think show us something about her.  The artists who helped me fill out the picture are Felix Vallotton, Ernst Kirchner, and Eri Iwasaki.

​Sabina Spielrein was an early psychoanalyst. She worked in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia from the early part of the 20th century until her death in 1942 in the Nazis’ massacre of Jews in the Russian town of Rostov. She made pioneering contributions to child analysis and development; and the understanding of critical ideas such as the relevance of evolutionary theory to psychology, and the link between the death instinct and the sex instinct. She was an extensively published scholar, a teacher and lecturer, and a clinician and analyst. She was a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and the analytic associations in Switzerland and Russia.  She had important ties with key figures in the field, including Freud, Bleuler,  Piaget, and Vygotsky.  Still a teenager, she was briefly a patient at the Burgholzli Clinic where she was treated by Carl Jung. She quickly went on to become Jung’s research assistant and student, collaborator, and close friend.   

In spite of the breadth of her connections and key role in the creation of a scholarly respectable psychoanalysis, Sabina Spielrein and her work were virtually forgotten from the time of her death until the late 1970s.  All the scholarly and clinical work she had done appeared to have been erased.  Thankfully, that changed in the late 70s with the discovery in Geneva of her personal papers including a diary and letters.  Since then,  scholars have begun paying attention to her work and writing seriously about it.  The popular media has also taken notice.  Unfortunately, too much popular attention has put the spotlight on her relationship with Carl Jung and questions about the whether theirs was a sexual connection and the extent to which it set up a triangle involving Sabina, Jung, and Freud.  Her work, again, appears to be at risk of being overlooked.

In wanting to know more about Sabina and how she moved through her very complicated times and places, I wanted to know what she looked like.  Unfortunately, I could find only two photographs of Sabina as an adult.  Both were very fuzzy images, one from her identity papers (1931) and the other, a group shot of the men and women staff of the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1921).  
​










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Sabina is in front row, second from left.
That is it.  One cannot explain the gap with the claim that there were not so many photographs then.  There are certainly many photographs of Freud and Jung and their male and female associates.  In fact, two other prominent women in these circles, Lou Andreas-Salome and Toni Wolff, are frequently and stunningly captured by the camera.  Take care:  If you google for an image of Sabina, you are likely to get Lou and Toni.  

​Art images on the way.  Please revisit this blog.
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All on the Same Afternoon

1/21/2019

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One afternoon, not so long ago, I encountered three amazing images of women. In each, a woman wears a special head covering.  The first came from a posting by my photographer friend, Ulas Tosun.  It presents a woman he photographed wearing wonderfully colorful clothing.  Hers is the face of an older woman, strong and showing signs of a life lived with determination. 
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I was taken by her strong stance and I loved all the patterns and color.  I thought it would be wonderful to be up close enough to paint her portrait.  Those eyes and the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth would be wonderful to try to get down on canvas.  Hers, I am sure, would be an important story to tell.  And then, there was the invitation to handle the posture as well as Picasso did in his large classical figures and to present the color and patterns with the inspiration of Matisse and his odalisques.

Just hours after finding Ulas' photograph, I found myself in front of the magnificent painting of the Visitation by Pontormo, the Italian Renaissance painter; on view at the Morgan Library and Museum, from September 7, 2018, to January 6, 2019.  Standing just under seven feet tall in recently restored brilliant color, it is quite a painting to encounter. 

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Sitting there, looking up, way up, I was in awe of the canvas, wanting to take in as much of it as I could.  And then, suddenly, my eyes stopped and fixed on the woman in the background of the painting.  She was in the background but swiftly moving to the center of my focus.  The woman with the grey green veil on her head. most likely accompanying Elizabeth, the older cousin, to her meeting with Mary, called to me.  She seemed to be saying:  "Don't you recognize me?"  She did indeed remind me of the woman in Ulas' photo.  Younger perhaps and of a different time and place but equally compelling.  She was already in a painting, a magnificent painting but I wanted to paint her again.
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Those two images should have been enough for one afternoon.  But then, on the way home, dealing with a bus that took too long in traffic, I found myself on Facebook with an another amazing woman.  Debra Rapoport posted the photograph below of a woman draped in a variety of kinds of netting.  Again, there are the eyes so filled with life, the suggestion of a wise smile, and the covering of the head.  Clearly, she is looking at me, and at you.
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I have invited each of these women to my studio.   I am not sure what will happen as I try to engage them in an art project, but last week's drawing exercise while working with Ulas' photo gives me hope.

​
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Travel Notes:  Oaxaca, Mexico

2/11/2018

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Mortimer Menpes, Mexican Pueblo, 1903.
          An art exhibition was not as important in sending us to Oaxaca; as the Derain, Balthus, and Giacometti exhibit was in launching our trip to France.  Nonetheless, another museum show did provide a strong second for our decision to travel to a new part of Mexico.  Many friends had encouraged us to branch out beyond San Miguel de Allende and spend some time in Oaxaca: "If you like San Miguel, you will love Oaxaca."  Friends' words were resoundingly supported at a lovely show at the Yale University Art Gallery last summer,  Small-Great Objects:  Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas.  This was an exhibition of pieces of art that the Albers, an artist couple -- she, an esteemed textile artist; he, an esteemed painter -- had collected in their travels in Mexico and South America.  The Albers had loved Mexico, especially Oaxaca, for its art, grand Prehispanic ruins, food, weather, and friends with whom they enjoyed life in a very special way.
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          The exhibit contained beautiful pieces of sculpture and textiles, alongside examples of art by Anni and Josef Albers that their collection had inspired.  Also to accompany the show, Yale University provided charming audiotapes by Anni Albers describing their love of Mexico to which they travelled many times in their lives,  over a period of thirty years beginning in 1935.   

​          Many things stopped me in my tracks as I toured the exhibit.  Anni's textiles, with which I was less familiar than her husband's paintings, were stunning in their beauty and link to the weavings and other art forms she had found in Mexico.  Josef's paintings, set along side photographs he had taken of Mexican homes, made really clear the connections between his iconic square paintings and what he had seen when he looked at Mexican windows and doors.  
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One of Anni's woven pieces.
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From their Americas collection.
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Josef Albers. Homage to the Square, 1955.
And both of their artistic practices were deeply influenced by the amazing Oaxacan ruins they visited repeatedly at Monte Alban and Mitla.

​
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Anni Albers. Monte Alban, 1936.
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Josef Albers. To Mitla, 1940.
          How lucky were we to be going to a place that had so captivated these wonderful artists and stirred their imaginations.
​

How to Write about Oaxaca

          
It is certainly tempting to tell you the story of our trip chronologically, moving day by day from November 8th to November 18th; starting with our leaving Ula in New York City in the good care of our friend, Patrice Wynne, and ending with our happy reunion.  But that won't do.  A simple linear approach just doesn't fit the experience of being in Oaxaca.  Oaxaca struck us as filled with complexities, many-layered, multidimensional; moving not just toward the future, but always pointing towards the past while very much in the present. 

          When I taught the psychological study of lives, I told students they should find a structure for their biographical writing that mirrored the structure of the life that they were trying to write about.  Now, here I am trying to find a structure that fits Oaxaca.  Seems right to write about what I experienced, as closely as I can to how I experienced it, without imposing any kind of trajectory.  Actually, I am writing about arenas of experience, or better, "niches of experience."  Merriam-Webster defines niche as "a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species."  The Urban Dictionary says that Native Americans use the word to indicate something sweet.  William James, the psychologist and philosopher, expands the meaning to include that place in a person's ecology especially well suited to her energies, that enables her to have an impact on the environment, that supports her creation of meaning in the chaos of life.   All of those definitions work for me.  So, what follows is some of the story of just three Oaxacan niches.

What Goes on at the Zócalo

       
Everyone who gave us tips on what to do in Oaxaca began with the Zócalo.  They all recommended we go there to sit at a café or restaurant, watch the flow of people, and feel part of many very human stories.  Some friends even said they went there everyday, no matter what else they might be doing.  So, soon after our arrival on the evening of the 8th, we headed out the hotel door for the public square. Without a map, long after the sun had set, and not quite sure of where we were in relation to the square, we just couldn't find the lively open space that everyone had recommended.  Instead, we fell into a nice, traditional Mexican restaurant, Restaurante Catedral, and ordered our first mescal and mole.
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​       We decided we would look for the Zócalo in the morning light.    We found it and instantly learned why we didn't see it the night before.  The square was no longer an open space.  It was completely filled with tents and other housing structures.  Some looked very temporary but others constructed with heavy black plastic and ropes seemed more permanent.  Many people were living here, many families with people of all ages, infants to grandparents.  Clothes were hanging to dry and food was being prepared on makeshift surfaces.   Also, signs of human habitation filled the small streets leading into the square. Large, low-hanging tarps, covered sleeping bags and cardboard platforms for sitting and gathering.
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No one had prepared us for this.  We needed to understand more about what was happening.  Yes, we knew about the hugely important teacher strike that had happened in 2006, and occasional later incidents of protest; but we were completely ignorant of the significant political activity that had continued without a break.  Getting hold of an explanation was not easy.  We asked all sorts of people about what was happening in the Zócalo, we got back shrugs, tired looks, and "Something is happening in the Zócalo?"  It was clear that whatever it was, it was not sitting easily with the people we asked.  We sensed ambivalence and sadness. 

       Later in the week, we went back to the square.  Some of the housing structures had been removed and we could see parts of an open public space.  As our friends had recommended, we sat at a café and watched life but we were amongst just a handful of visitors.  It was also now easier to see the many large banners of protest and also to notice the many groups of young people.  They met in circles to discuss what seemed to be issues very important to them.  They formed a kind of university of the public square.  I am sure these young people could have taught me a lot about what was happening at the Zócalo but my poor Spanish language skills kept me from joining them.  

       Hopefully, when we return (and we will), my Spanish will be better.


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 Thank God for Good Bookstores and Libraries
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       A very positive review in the Moon Oaxaca travel guide by Justin Henderson required that our first day include a visit to the "exceptional bookstore, Libreria Amate."  This store is a goldmine of English language books on things Mexican -- Mexican art, history, literature, cooking, archeology, anthropology, and more.  A special table held English translations of books by contemporary Mexican authors, books like the splendid The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli.  Special shelves held a wonderful collection of books about the past and current social, cultural, and political situation of Oaxaca.  Looking at these, I knew I was getting closer to understanding where I was.  I thought that the person who knew to order and stock these books could tell me a lot about Oaxaca.  That person was the owner of the shop, Henry Wangeman.  He wasn't there on our first or second visit, but I sent him an email with my questions and we found him on our third visit.  I was right.  He knew and was willing to share a lot of his experiences in Oaxaca, on the teachers' strikes and much more, like the crisis around corn and local peoples' efforts to reverse the horrible effects of not using Mexican corn seeds.   

       Conversations with Henry were gifts.  Before we met him, we knew we would soon be returning to Oaxaca; but after spending time listening to him, I knew we would return with our eyes open wider.  On our last visit to the store, I purchased a book called Teaching Rebellion:  Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, edited by Diana Denham and C.A.S.A Collective, published by PM Press, in 2008.  The book is a collection of testimonies by twenty-three people -- activists, schoolteachers, students, housewives, children, organizers, artists, journalists, religious and union leaders, journalists -- who participated in the 2006 movement for social justice in Oaxaca and what became known as the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca.  These are wonderful stories about life in a time of great change, told by those living it.  If I were still teaching, I would ask my students to read this book.

       Henry's store was not our only interaction with books in Oaxaca.  Here is a delightful photograph I took of the facade of the public bibliotheca/library on Alcalá.  It is never too late to read.
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And then, there were these charming corners in the magnificent Biblioteca de Francisco Burgoa, a beautifully restored space for books and manuscripts, in the Centro Cultural de Santo Domingo.  I do not yearn to be a child again; but oh, how easy it was to wish to be a small girl reading special books in such a space, at one's very own perfectly sized chair and table. 
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Thank God for Artists and the Niches They Create
       Several times on our trip, I was taken with the extent to which Mexican artists give back to their communities.  They go far beyond the donation of individual artworks.  Artists in Oaxaca create and give whole new spaces for others, spaces in which others can enjoy the awe of creativity.  Indeed, they make and give niches.  The extraordinary generosity with funds and time and the deep connections between artists and their communities are quite different from what I have come to know of artists in the U.S.  
     
      Our first encounter with this wonderful phenomenon was the Museo Arte Prehispanico de Rufino Tamayo.  Tamayo, a famous Mexican artist, not only donated his entire collection of more than 1,000 pieces of pre-Columbian art to his hometown of Oaxaca City.  He also renovated an important 18th century structure to house the collection.  Tamayo intended each piece which he carefully selected for its aesthetic and emotionally expressive qualities to teach his community about the diversity and skill of their ancestors who had created the work.  His message reaches all of us.  I took lots of photographs in this space.  Here are a few 0f my favorites.


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       In Ocotlan, a village not far from Oaxaca City, we found the remarkable contributions of the artist, Rudolfo Morales.  The internationally known artist gave his fortune to his hometown.  Among the many churches and other public buildings he restored are the Templo de Santo Domingo and the main municipal building that also includes his frescoes.  His foundation, based at the Casa Cultural Rudolfo Morales, continues to fund a variety of educational, environmental, artistic, and community projects.

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        And then there is the amazing Francisco Toledo who is still with us, and whose name came up in connection with so many attempts to improve life for people in Oaxaca.  I made a list of his projects but I know it is missing many items.  The first I encountered was the Instituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca that he founded.  He donated the colonial building in which it sits and the amazing art library that is said to house anywhere from 25,000 to 66,000 volumes and a collection of at least 7,000 prints.  It was a great place to visit, filled with students pouring over wonderful texts.  There were also many students present in Etla, San Augustin, just outside of Oaxaca City.  There, Toledo renovated an old textile factory and created a great cultural center, exhibition space, and art school.
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        It was hard to find in Oaxaca City a museum with which he was not connected.  For example, he was key in the founding of the Photographic Center, Centro de Fotografia Manuel Alvarez Bravo and the contemporary art museum, Museo de los Paintores Oaxaquenos.

       But his influence does not stop with art.  One of the most impressive gardens I have ever visited, rich with historical and cultural significance, is the Ethnobotanical Garden nearby the Templo Santo Domingo.  With others, Toledo was responsible for securing the site and the creation of this garden.


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And then in the midst of all this wonderful work for the community, Toledo remains a exceptionally prolific and creative artist.  How can one not be impressed and inspired.

Time to Pack!
       

There are many more Oaxacan niches to write about, but they will need wait.  Within a week, we are returning to this magical place and I need to get ready for that.  Writing will continue while I am there. Stay posted.

        I will end this blog with some of the photographs I took in Oaxaca, with a brief description of each.
These appear in the order in which I took them:

On my first morning walk in Oaxaca, this is what I saw.
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And this is what I think Josef Albers saw and paused in front of, given what he went on to paint, as in his sketch for an oil painting, at right.  
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​Sitting in the back seat of a car, on our way to the first of many excursions I was stunned by the beautiful deep blue color of the sky (you can see that in many of the photographs posted earlier).  I think the person responsible for the building we drove by also liked the color.
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I think Josef Albers liked it too. 
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If you are wondering why Josef Albers keeps showing up, know that he is not the only one.  In Mexico and in thinking about Mexico, I never feel alone.  There are all the lovely people one encounters and connects with just by being there.  And then, there are the artists and writers who have been inspired by Mexico and their work also stays with me.  In this second category, my best chums on this trip were D.H. Lawrence and Oliver Sacks.  These links deserve their own blog.
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​There are sooo many wonderful Mexican restaurants in Oaxaca.  Some say that here is the best Mexican food.  But, where ever we are, even here, David will find a splendid Italian restaurant.
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​We heard wonderful music in Oaxaca.  One special chamber music concert was in the beautifully restored chapel at the Templo y Ex-Convento de San Agustin, just east of the Zocal0.  This is a beautiful window from that chapel.
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​Markets make up a big and important part of a visit to Oaxaca.  There is a nearly daily one in Oaxaca City and the villages that surround the city have their own special market days.  You can plan your week around them. 
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​Here is a very splendid creature.  We found him on a craft tour across a number of villages.  He comes from San Martin Tilcajete, the village that specializes in alebrijes, fanciful wooden creatures.  This particular piece was made in the workshop of Jacabo and Maria Angeles, master and mistress of this craft. 
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​Just a few more shots from the magical ethnobotanical garden.
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​Be sure not to miss the wonderful cultural and historical center, Centro Cultural Domingo (right next door to the Ethnobotanical Garden).  Beautiful buildings, a museum chock full of wonderful pieces, great concerts in the cloister, and very special exhibitions of contemporary art.  
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I love this piece that I believe was found at Monte Alban.
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A detail from the enormous painting by the contemporary artist, Sergio Hernandez.
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​And then, there were the ruins.  We visited the two major sites.  The first was Monte Alban.  Spectacular.
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The second ancestral site we visited was Mitla.  Not quite as spectacular as Monte Alban, but just as interesting.  The scope and scale of the buildings was of a more human scale for me and the decoration, a kind of stone mosaic, is completely intriguing.  The current show on Joself Albers at the Guggenheim makes much of his photographs of Mitla and the art that he did based on what he saw.  
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​Just a couple more shots from the Cultural Center at Etla San Augustin, at the old textile factory restored by Toledo.  The first is of the paper making facility just a short walk down the hill from the main building.  A beautiful place in which to make beautiful paper.  And then, just one of the many charming details in the complex. 
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​And then it is time to go.  We depart from the charming colorful Oaxaca Airport to find ourselves hours later in a neighborhood restaurant listening to jazz.  There are many good things to celebrate.
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2 Comments

From Pine Plains to Paris -- It Just Took Jazz!

10/24/2017

1 Comment

 
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Andre Derain, Arlequin et Pierrot, around 1924
A Travel Memoir
 
Plus, comments on:
 Derain, Balthus, and Giacometti:  An Artistic Friendship, MUSEE D’ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS, 2 June – 29 October 2017.

 Being Modern:  MOMA  in Paris.  FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON, 11 October 2017 - 5 March 2018.

  

     It was a quiet summer Sunday afternoon in Pine Plains.  David had just gone off to jazz camp in Vermont.  I settled down for some reading.  Sitting in the very comfortable leather chair, with my lovely little dog Ula at my side, I dove into Jed Perl’s very positive review of an exhibition of Derain, Balthus, and Giacometti, at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. Click here for a link to that article.  
Perl called it "a show packed with ravishments and revelations."

     I was enchanted.  Perl wrote that the show offered a new and important way of looking at the work of these French artists, through the lens of their artistic and personal friendship.  The exhibition addressed themes near and dear to my heart; themes like the relationship between traditional and modern art, the relationship between art and reality,  the relevance of art to the world in which the artist finds herself, and the ability of modern art to transcend any individual artist's emotional needs and limitations. I was hooked, convinced that I had to see this show before I could seriously take up the paint brush again.  Sadly, the show was closing in just a few months and we were already fully booked for our fall travel schedule. I needed to stop dreaming and be content just to read about the exhibition, and keep painting without the help of the trio of art friends.
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     But then, only hours later, I received a text from David.  During a break between jam sessions, he wrote:  “Vers, Pont du Gard.  Check out this town in France.”  A phone call followed and revealed that there was soon to be another jazz camp, this one for a week in the south of France.  It was to be held in a lovely home in a beautiful Provence setting, music all day everyday with musicians from the U.S. and France, all meals provided by the home owner/chef, excursions to places like Avignon, opportunity for me to draw and paint in the French countryside, and Ula was welcomed to come too.  While we were in France, we could visit Paris again and take up a friend’s standing invitation to stay at her beautiful apartment in a perfect part of Paris.  I was on my way to that yearned for museum show!  The plan:  Fly into Paris on the amazingly reasonable Norwegian Air, an overnight there, train to Avignon, a week of jazz in the south (village in Vers), a week in Paris, fly back to New York.

From Paris to the South of France

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Suzanne's iphone camera, 2017
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​     What a sky over one of John Singer Sargent's most impressive painting spots!  We had less than a full day in Paris before we headed south, but we used it well.  This photo is from our long and easy stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens (long and easy, that is, until we got busted by a cute Paris policeman who told us dogs were allowed only in one small quadrant of the Gardens).  The photo shows the wonderful weather that blessed us through our two week stay.  No need for those turtlenecks or umbrellas that we packed.

     Early the next morning, on a Sunday in Paris without cars but thankfully, with taxis; we left from the Gare de Lyon on the fast and comfortable TGV train to Avignon.  Here is a view of the train station from Ula's perspective:

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And here is a view of Ula and David on the train along with a view from the train window.  
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       They sure look happy, don't they?  Well, we were all very happy.  The view from the train was stunning.  Morning clouds lifted to reveal a bright blue sky.  Field after field was a beautiful green.  So special is how in the midst of vast green expanses and masses of trees, small clusters of village buildings emerge.  It all looks just right.  The placement of the trees on the landscape, the purple mountains in the distance, etc. --- it is like a perfect still life arrangement.  There are even scattered gatherings of white cows, perfect inspiration for the painting I am working on.  David read, Suzanne wrote and sketched, and Ula gathered her thoughts.  Here is some of what Ula was thinking on that train ride:

       "I did it again.  I wowed them with my great travel skills.  Suzanne put me in my red bag at JFK and didn't take me out until we left Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.  Not a peep was heard from me on that flight, not even when that noisy baby was crying and crying.  I am now doing my calm and quiet routine on the train.  I love it when taxi drivers and train conductors tell me that I am the best dog traveler they have ever met.  About Paris, I like it so far.  I can sit outside in cafes and restaurants where very efficient waiters bring me handsome bowls of water (l'eau sans gas).  French dogs seem nice.  A quick hello is okay for them and their owners, not like New York where dogs and their owners have hurt feelings if I don't want to sniff and play forever.  Sylvie's apartment in Paris is big with just enough places for me to settle into.  It has good smells.  The cat, Theo, who lived there for many years. must have had a good life.  So now, we are off to Provence.  They tell me there is a big, friendly dog there.  We will see how that goes.  In the meantime, we travel.  I watch Suzanne.  She sure does love these landscapes!"

     We all stayed very happy on the train until about 2:45.  Then, everything stopped.  We came to a halt at an unscheduled station.  An announcement:  An incident requiring police intervention was changing everything on all the trains.  No trains were being allowed in or out of Marseille station (our train's final stop).  No one knew how long we would be kept from moving.  What had been a very quiet car came to life.  Just about everyone began consulting their phones and other devices.  People shared news.  The incident involved stabbings at the train station in Marseille, two young women were killed, the police had gunned down one man, the accused.  The level of tension on the train was high.  There have been too many incidents like this one in France and elsewhere.  As hours passed, the car became quiet again.  We sat and waited, David read, I wrote and drew, including a little notebook sketch of David reading.  
   
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     After four hours, we were cleared to go.  We got back on track with the hope that there would be no more bad news, at least for a while.   At Avignon, our destination, we were met by Philippe at whose home we would be staying for the week of jazz.  He drove us to Vers and a household made for music.  David jumped into a jam session.  I sat with the other American jazz spouse as we chatted with Marie Edith, the marvelous woman of the house and terrific chef.  Ula and the large beautiful white lab became acquainted.

Jazz in Vers

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          The week of jazz was even more wonderful than David the drummer had hoped it would be.  David, the American jazz student on the sax, six French musicians from the area, and Roni Ben-Hur, the wonderful teacher and coach for all, played a lot together.  Every morning after breakfast, every afternoon after lunch, and every evening after dinner, they jammed.  They worked on a set of jazz standards and some Brazilian music.  At the end of the week, the ensemble presented a concert.  Philippe and Marie Edith's home filled with jazz enthusiasts.  Friends and neighbors came even from a distance for the celebration.  Everyone contributed a pot luck dish as part of the amazing sharing that occurred (as David put it while watching people join the party:  "I haven't seen so much kissing since high school").  The concert was a hit.  
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Some members of the jazz ensemble.
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Roni at the concert.
            While David played the drums, I drew.   Some pencils and pens, a little bit of watercolor paint, my trusty art dog by my side, a simply gorgeous landscape --- it doesn't get much better than this.  Here is some of what I saw, and pages from my notebook with some of what I tried to make of what I saw. 

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I became obsessed with the idea of the view "in between." I love the way the olive and other trees frame the jewel like landscape vignette.
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You walk out the door, and this is what you see.
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          And there was more than music playing and drawing.  We ate and drank incredibly well, and often.  Marie Edith ran a very special restaurant in Uzes for a number of years.  And that shows in the skill, creativity, organization and care that she puts into every meal -- special beef and chicken daubes, magret de canard, foie gras, oysters and mussels, pates, special anchovy ceviche; and so on.  In the evenings, we ate together indoors, but lunch was usually outdoors, out under the trees with a lovely breeze and bright sun beyond the shade of our table.  Thankfully, for the sake of our bodies, we also got in some exercise.  I knew I would be doing QiGong with my friend GAP. in Paris, but I was delightfully surprised to find QiGong -- two different classes -- near the small town of Vers.  Musicians and non-musicians went to find Qi and did.  We also had some wonderful opportunities for touring.  Two of them were to the market in Uzes.
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          There were also little trips to important tourist destinations like Pont du Gard, Avignon, Aignes-Mortes, and the sea.  Best of all, before the close of our week, David enjoyed a birthday dinner in a Moroccan restaurant in Nimes.  I cannot think of a better way for him to have celebrated his special day.

​​Back to Paris

          This time, the TCV train was only peaceful.  We left Avignon at a reasonable hour in the morning and were back to Paris for lunch.  Even more important, we were back with plenty of time to spare to attend the first performance of a new ballet created by our choreographer friend, Samuel Murez.  Le spectacle, entitled "Francois Alu Hors Cadre" was remarkably inventive, full of wonderful dancing and great wit.  It is rare to see such a combination of highly skilled classical ballet dancers, irreverence toward institutional ballet, gestures with the humor of Charlie Chaplin, sharp social satire, philosophy that sounds like poetry, and a great Jacques Brel song. According to David, in the humanity of the work, "They succeeded in piercing the fourth wall," the dancers created a bridge across the usual chasm between classical ballet dancers and the audience.  They charmingly held our hands as we crossed over.   Quite a start to our full week in Paris!  The Murez company, Soloists and Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet -- 3rd Floor (click here: STDRE.3E-ETAGE.COM) have performed in the United States in the past, let's hope they come back soon.
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          Cultural life did not go down hill from there.  The next day, we went to the new performance center in a northeastern part of Paris, the Cite de la Musique in the Parc de la Villette.  We heard the masterful pianist, Maurizio Pollini.  He played pieces only by Chopin and Schumann, three on the main program and then four; yes, four, encores from Chopin. It was magical.  Twenty-four hundred people filled this very large, very modern space; but all was silence except for the magical sounds of the piano and the thunderous applause at the end of the concert.  Pollini created a new world in the center of the stage and we all became loyal citizens.   
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Paris and the Much Anticipated Museum Visit
          The Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris is in the 16th arrondissement, a rather fancy part of Paris; in an area near the river and the Place D'Alma with a very high density of museums. The Palais Toyko, a space for contemporary art; The Museum Guimet, with a large collection of Asian art; The Galliera Fashion Museum; and the new Yves St. Laurent museum are all neighbors.  One could spend a full week of museum visiting just in these few blocks. 

          On Tuesday, the first day of its opening since our arrival in Paris, I made my first of two visits to the exhibition, "Derain, Balthus, Giacometti:  An Artistic Friendship."  Here are the three artists in self-portraits.  With those faces and that stance, one can be sure one is in for something special in this exhibit of more than 350 pieces.  
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Andre Derain (1880-1954)
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Balthus (1908-2001)
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Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
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Let's walk through the rooms together.  But, not to worry, I won't write about all of them.
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          At the beginning and end of the exhibition are quotations that stopped me in my tracks.  The first of these is from Giacometti, writing in 1967.

                         "All of the art of the past, every age, every civilization, arises before me, everything is                                simultaneous as if space were taking the place of time."
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Indeed, what is displayed in first rooms of the exhibit show that these supreme modernists had a special connection to the art of the past.  They were not overthrowing the past; but finding new ways to let their art be energized by the past.  Giacometti draws wonderful copies of classical sculptures, Derain is said to have been converted by the art he saw in Rome, Balthus discovers Piero della Francesca.  All three discover the marvels of art from Oceania and Africa.   Most touching for me were Balthus' copies of Piero's frescoes for The Legend of the True Cross series. 
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I love that in the midst of this most classical of paintings, in its upper left hand corner, one finds what could be the beginning of a  wonderful modern abstract painting. 
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Having seen the care with which Balthus made the copies, I have a whole new way of looking at his own paintings, such as this beautiful one from 1980-1981.  Piero and other Renaissance artists are alive in Balthus' figures, his depiction of light, and the fresco like surface of the painting.  Seeing his connection with the past takes me beyond the narrow view of Balthus as a creepy child pornographer. This exhibition makes clear he deserves a broader understanding than that. 
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          In the second major section of the exhibit, a section called "Silent Lives," one sees the three artists confronting nature and physical reality in landscapes, still life, and figures.  As they confront reality, they also break with it.  To make art, they connect with but then leave nature in order to show us how hard they work to perceive it; and to create, not a natural truth, but a pictorial truth.  Giacometti's work best exemplifies for me the struggle to perceive and then depict his acts of perceiving.  His tangle of lines reveals both the difficulty and his determination to put down on canvas the image of another person or thing.
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          Balthus paints a still life not as a mirror to someone's real life tabletop, but as Balthus' own unique story of tabletops, and of home as a domestic space.  His is a story about violence, explicit and below the surface violence.  Think about the image below in comparison with what you usually think of as still life painting.  I didn't want to get up too close to this one.
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          As reflected in the subtitle for the exhibition, "An Artistic Friendship," it is in large part about connections between the three artists; and between them and their shared friends and patrons, and the broader social and cultural context in which they were major players.  In an especially charming part of the show, the three artists repeatedly create portraits of the same people.  Here is Isabel Lambert presented by Giacometti and Derain over a 13 year period.  
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Derain, 1935-1939.
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Giacometti, 1936.
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Derain, 1936.
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Giacometti, 1949.
          Relevant to these artist's connection to the broader culture is the extensive amount of work -- scenery, costumes, etc., that each of them did for the theater and dance.  Here is Giacometti's tree for Waiting for Godot.  Once you see it, it is hard to imagine a production of the Beckett play without it.
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          The importance of the participation of these artists in a very active and distinctive community of artists at the beginning of the 20th century cannot be overstated.  The consequences of the sharing that went on between artists was brought home again to me in a museum show we saw later in the week.  At the Marmottan Museum, the museum dedicated to Monet (1840-1926), we saw an exhibition of Monet as collector.  The rooms were filled with a hundred or so paintings and other pieces of art by other artists that Monet had purchased, received, exchanged, and collected while he was alive.  Paintings reveal artists visiting each other, painting each other's portraits, and influencing each other.  This exhibit allows for a close look at the life and work of Monet and also the larger artistic setting of which he was a part.  It shows art as an interpersonal as well as deeply individual pursuit.  It makes the point about art and friendship in a period of time just before that of the Modern Museum show.  It also shows the danger of the categories we often impose upon art, categories that mark boundaries between work we call "academic," "impressionist," modern."  Monet's connections with and collections of other artists show that artists themselves regularly cross over those boundaries.

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Derain's studio console for his painting equipment.
          "Time Stands Still in the Studio" was the only room that showed significant whimsy.  The curator, Jacqueline Munck, gets close here to both the artistic process and the artists' understanding of what happens in the studio.  She puts two wonderful quotations on the wall.  One by Giacometti, and the other by Balthus who describes what it is like to be in Giacometti's studio.

                    "Inside the studio ... the creative process with its retouches, its restarts, and its acts of                              destruction, stands apart from the passage of time."   Giacometti, 1956

                    "The studio is the work place ... the place for crafting...I remember Giacometti's.
                 Magical, cluttered with objects, materials, papers, and that general impression of being in the                     close proximity of secrets."   Balthus, 2001
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           I think that this painting/self-portrait by Derain of the artist in his studio reveals some of his secrets.  The painting is filled with references to and symbols employed in traditional still life painting across the ages; but it is also very much a painting of the artist at his home, in a domestic space.  Derain breaks the boundary between studio and home.  

           The last part of the exhibit, entitled "Coming to Grips with Darkness," changes the tone again.  It brings us back to our three artists as they set traditional themes into very dark contexts.  As Jed Perl aptly put it,  this is an exhibition about the melancholy of modernism.  The times in which these artists lived was not an easy one, and they certainly saw and knew that.  The challenge they took up was how to create a new art suitable to their time, and simultaneously an art that drew on the past, the past of their own and other cultures.     
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Derain, Great Black Bacchanal, 1935-1945.
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Giacometti, The Invisible Object, 1934.


          We are back here to that struggle to both find, plumb the mystery of, and depict a very harsh reality, a struggle that we have seen over and over in this exhibition.  We also see the humanity, sincerity, and rigorous order with which the artists pursue their struggle.  The works displayed show the courage to create beauty in a world whose darkness and despair they very, very clearly see.  As the title for this room says, they have come to grips with the darkness.  The painting that best makes the point that they see some hope and light in the darkness is this still life by Derain.  This is a painting that has made it through the struggle,  the struggle we all face.  The white lines are indeed the light that overcomes the darkness.
 
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Derain, Still Life on a Black Ground, about 1945

          At the very end of the exhibit, we find a quotation by Derain on the last wall.  Like the one from Giacometti, it has to do with time.
     
                    "The mind knows neither past nor future; the mind is an immense present."

This line reminded me of the Buddhist saying that goes something like:  Every moment that we live, as we live it,  contains every moment that has happened before it and every moment that will happen after it.  Thinking of Derain's words with that in mind,  I hear Derain saying that in making paintings, he seeks to include all of what we know and might know as art.  Certainly, in looking at his work, I could see so many earlier painters -- Rubens, Delacroix, Corot, Renoir, Cezanne, and so many Italian painters from the early and late Renaissance and Baroque periods.  To the extent that his paintings also show the search for something new (Giacometti calls Derain "the most audacious of them all"), his work is avant garde and points towards paintings that are yet to be painted.  I left the exhibit with lots to think about, and, even more important, lots to paint with and for.  My museum visit blessed me with more sources of inspiration and a greater sense of responsibility to paint.

           Remember that review that started all of this.  When I returned home to New York, I reread Jed Perl's review.  Having seen the work he wrote about, I could appreciate his comments even more than I had at first reading, especially that very powerful last section and line of his essay.  He describes the exhibition of Derain, Balthus, and Giacometti at the Museum of Modern Art as a corrective and response to much of what is to be regretted about the current state of art and art history -- the too easy equation of a particular artist's style or sensitivity with a particular political tendency (as in the identification of Picasso's classicism during the years of World War I with the later Fascist and Nazi attraction to classicism), the winks that too many contemporary artists seem driven to put into their art pieces, the excessive irony and skepticism.  In answer to all of those, the show in Paris

                   "responds with a clearheadedness and an intrepid confidence rare in the museum
                   world.   What we have here is nothing less than another side of the great modern
                   adventure.  That Derain, Balthus, and Giacometti are so absolutely insistent on
                   rejecting irony in favor of sincerity and magic in favor of metaphysics gives this
                   exhibition a particular urgency in our own dark times." (Perl, 2017, NYRB)

Five More Glorious Days in Paris 

           This museum visit over the course of two days certainly made the trip to Paris worthwhile, but it was not the last wonderful experience.  More museums, visits with friends, great restaurants, markets, a little shopping, wonderful walks through many sections of Paris, and even some Chinese movement joyfully filled our hours.  Here are just a couple of highlights.

          I wrote above about attending Qi Gong classes in the south.  We did the same in Paris.  Right across the street from the Museum of Modern Art, on a terrace of the Palais Galliera, we had a terrific early morning Qi Gong class with our artist friend, GAP. (I have written about GAP. in an earlier blog on this website, click here to see that blog).  She is a vigorous and inspiring teacher. Following class, we visited GAP.'s wonderful studio, and had a lovely coffee with her and her gracious husband, Robert.  They live in an apartment filled with art and other signs of a wonderful life.  It is a another perfect Paris apartment.  We are blessed with friends who share how much they love where they live. Here is a photo of a new wall in GAP.'s studio that she built with her son to house her work.  An amazing amount of work!  

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          Towards the end of the week, our good friend David Frost who is now teaching in London took the chunnel train to come and spend a few days with us.  It's astonishing to me that one can travel from London to Paris in less than 2 1/2 hours, that's the same amount of time it takes to get from Manhattan to Pine Plains. Hmm.  We visited together the Louis Vuitton Museum,  in the Bois de Boulogne where Paris meets Neuilly-sur-Seine, a trip strongly recommended by our Parisian friend, Sylvie.  The building for the museum is a fantastic Frank Gehry structure.
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This photo is from Louis Vuitton Foundation website.

          The current exhibit in the museum is a show entitled, "Being Modern:  MoMA in Paris."  I confess that when I saw that title, I said to myself: "I came all the way to Paris to see pieces from New York?"  As soon as I entered the exhibit, all disappointment and skepticism vanished.   It is a terrific exhibition, especially for anyone with an attachment to MoMA's history in New York.  It is not only that some of the most wonderful pieces from MoMA that we have come to know and love are on display. 
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There are also some very special pieces that one does not usually get to see in New York; most notably, pieces from MoMA's film archives.   But best about the show for me was the way it enabled a reconnection with the famous New York museum.  The Vuitton Foundation presents a view of what MoMA is an institution that I haven't appreciated for a long time.  It tells a compelling and cohesive  story about the place, with regard to its origin story and mission.  I no longer recognize those when I visit MoMA in New York.  These days, MoMa feels just too big, with too many people, caught in unending renovations that never seem to help, without a clear display of its physical, social, and cultural orientation.  The Paris exhibit makes clear that it was not always that way.   

          There is a marvelous room on the first floor of the exhibit that tells the history of MoMA from 1929 to 1968, through documents, photographs, and film.  It makes clear that at the very beginning, the development of MoMA was in the hands of a very small group, three women, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan; joined by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first director.  In this display, one feels that the museum was on a human scale, with key decisions made and a shared vision created by specific people.  Maybe there were some, I emphasize some, good things about the good old days.  

          On exhibit are over 200 works from the 1880s to the present day, arranged chronologically.  We successfully made our way through only a very small piece of this.  After the American abstract expressionists, I knew I would need to return for at least one more visit, on another trip.   


          You, my dedicated reader, are probably feeling the way I did at the end of the abstract expressionism section:  Enough with museums.  I will spare you from having to read more words about the other museums we took in.  Instead, I will close this very long blog with some observations about the difference between Paris and New York, between Parisians and New Yorkers.  The first is not to be taken too seriously; but the second, holds something worth thinking more about.

          Early in our stay, I wrote to our Paris friend, Sylvie, to tell her that I had been mistaken for a Parisian twice on my first morning walk with Ula.  Sylvie replied that I look too happy to be taken for a Parisian.  She explained that to look like a Parisian, I would need not only to wear black but learn how to sigh and complain all the time.  Well, after she told me that, I indeed heard many sighs and complaints from Parisians.  This was not true for all Parisians, but for many that I met in shops or other public spaces.  Whenever I said we came from New York, the reaction was always something like:  "Oh I love New York, it's not like Paris.  Paris is just cute, it's a museum.  New York is a real city."  Then they added some version of "Everything is possible in New York, nothing ever changes in Paris, you can't do with your life in Paris what you could do in New York."  I would walk away thinking, I could do with a little more cute; and wondering whether most people who live in New York think everything is possible.  

          On a more serious note was the difference I saw between New Yorkers and Parisians (and people in the south of France too) in how they spoke about Donald Trump as president.   In the U.S., in the circles in which I usually find myself, I have become accustomed to people starting their laments about our current political situation cautiously and calmly; but then, they quickly speed up, listing a whole set of things that are wrong, in a very agitated tone.  What started as a group sharing a nice dinner together is whipped into an anger filled mob with back and forth between everyone there about how awful Trump and his administration are.  This goes on until we are all just too tired to say anymore.  In France, on the hand, the mood is much more somber and dark and quiet.  They say simply that they are very fearful about what might happen because of this U.S. president.  They are as informed, if not better informed, then we are about what is happening in the U.S.; and they are scared.   This difference, I think,  has to do with differences in life experiences.  People in France, they themselves or the generations immediately before them, directly experienced the horrors of totalitarianism in the forms of fascism, nazism, and communism.  They lived through World War II.  They know better what to fear.  
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Thinking about Judith Clark

5/24/2017

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Below, some thoughts inspired by Jim Dwyer’s compelling essay about Judith Clark[1] and her parole board’s recent decision not to grant her parole, after Governor Cuomo granted her clemency.  Jim Dwyer, Denied Parole, a Former Radical Reflects on Symbolism and Redemption.  New York Times, May 4, 2017, p. A19
 
       Judith Clark understands why being a person is better than being a symbol.  A symbol is isolated, detached from the push and pull of everyday life; and absolute, complete in and of itself.  A person, on the other hand, lives in connection with others, affects and is affected by them; a person is incomplete, and full of possibilities. In 1983, when she was 33 (she is now 67), Judith Clark thought a lot about symbols and defined herself as one; specifically, she thought herself a symbol of the Revolution. Reflecting on what happened in 1983, Judith Clark now says she tragically limited how she could think about both herself and other people.  As she puts it, thinking about herself as symbol, she lost her humanity.  She failed to think about the victims of the Brink’s robbery, their families, and her own family.  Now, Judith Clark thinks about herself as a person, and she has recovered her humanity. The wonderful work she has done for others during her 35 years in prison – including training dogs for work with disabled veterans and police officers, working as a chaplain’s assistant, helping develop a college program in the prison, supporting women with AIDS, leading prenatal and newborn classes – shows the change.  Her thoughts about herself have moved from Judith Clark as symbol to Judith Clark as a distinctive individual living with and responsible to distinctive other individuals, in a distinctive place and time.  In other words, she is actively, flexibly, and deeply thinking about herself as a person. Hannah Arendt would simply say she is thinking: “To think and to be fully alive are the same thing.” (Arendt, The life of the mind: Thinking)

       Sadly, members of her parole board chose to regress, to bring us back to symbols and ignore the promise of persons. In their decision not to grant her parole, they throw Judith Clark back into the role of symbol.  They confine her to being a symbol, no longer of the revolution, but a symbol of a cop killer. They ignore Judith Clark the person and all that she has become and done while in prison; and fail to imagine all that she might contribute to the wider society if released.  They do the same to themselves.  They confine themselves to being a symbol of the toughness of our society when it comes to crimes that involve policemen’s deaths.  They ignore what each of them is capable of, and their own possibilities for growth.  They fail to imagine what more they could do as persons to address the serious problem of violence between police and citizens.  They stop, after the countless testimonies from a diversity of sources that support her release and after 7 hours of talking with her, and simply say “no.” They limit how Judith Clark can think about herself and they limit how they think about themselves.  They lose their appetite for meaning and the possibility of needed social change.
 
          It is more than likely that if men were ever to lose the appetite for meaning which we call                        thinking, and cease to ask unanswerable questions, they would lose not only the ability to                        produce those thought-things which we call works of art but also the capacity for asking all the              unanswerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.
                                                          Hannah Arendt

                                                          The New Yorker (21 November 1977)
 
        The parole board’s decision also minimizes the thinking the rest of us can do.  Do we really need symbols of the complexities and horrors of the relationships between police and people in society?  Do we not have enough actual instances of those relationships?  Can’t we leave aside symbols and use those real life cases to contend with, feel responsible to, and attempt to resolve the issues?  Violence between police and citizens is a serious problem that requires not symbols but persons who create possibilities for and take concrete action towards solutions. One hopes that the members of the parole board, as individuals and as a group, find their humanity the next time they are asked to rule.  One hopes they provide room for all of us, with Judith Clark at the forefront of their thoughts, to act as persons.         

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[1] Judith Clark was one of eight people involved in the Brink’s 1981 truck robbery in New York that went terribly wrong. In the course of events, one Brink’s guard and two policemen died. Judith was a driver of a get-away car.  She and Kathy Boudin and the six men had worked in groups labeled as politically radical, over many years prior to the robbery.  At the 1983 trail, Judith showed no remorse and simply held to the stance of one committed to the revolution.  She had no legal defense, she was sent to the basement and heard the court proceedings over a loud speaker.  She was charged with felony murder and sentenced to 75 years in prison.  Kathy Boudin, who pleaded guilty and had strong legal representation, was sentenced to 25 years. Kathy was released on parole after 20 years, in 2002.  
 
Kathy enrolled in courses I taught at The Graduate School at CUNY.  She now holds a degree in social work and a Ph.D. in education. She teaches at Columbia where she is co-director of their Center on Justice.  She is a regular target of FOX news and Breitbart.  They want her fired from Columbia but the university has remained supportive of her.  Through Kathy, I learned that Judith Clark, imprisoned at Bedford Hills facility for women, was interested in narrative psychology and the study of lives (what I was teaching).  I visited her in the prison and had wonderful conversations.  Judith had changed dramatically from the single-minded radical of the 1983 courtroom.  She had done extensive work with a psychoanalyst who was also a Buddhist. From this, she developed her own unique and very deep spirituality.  She worked in the prison with women with AIDS, women who were pregnant and with young children, helped develop a college program for inmates, and became a chaplain.  Also, she was doing extraordinary work in the training of dogs for work with disabled veterans and police.  Talking with her, I knew I was in the presence of a remarkable and rare person who felt deep sorrow for what she had done.  I wrote in support of her being released on parole.  Many people wrote, and we waited.  Finally, Governor Cuomo granted her clemency.  He said the case for her release was remarkably strong.   
 
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A Syrian Boy and a Botticelli Madonna

2/18/2017

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     Ten days before Christmas, 2016, on the front page of the New York Times,  Michael Kimmelman warns us that photographs don't have the power they once had.  The art critic writes that images don't capture and hold people's attention the ways they once did. They don't provoke people to do something about the horror to which the images bear witness.  To support his claim, he compares the public response to two pairs of photographs.  The earlier pair shows a starving Sudanese girl in 1993 (Kevin Carter, Getty Images), and children fleeing an accidental South Vietnamese napalm strike in 1972 (Nick Ut, Associated Press). 
     To these photographs, Kimmelman says people responded.  The images generated strong and sustained concern by the public and that led to meaningful policy changes.  

     That is not what happening in response to the second, later, pair of photographs.   These are recent images from the crises in Syria.  One shows the body of Alan Kurdi, a small refugee boy on a beach.  He drowned as his family sought to escape Syria for Europe (Nilufer Demir, Dogan News Agency, Via Agence France-Presse, Getty Images); and the other, Omran Daqneesh, another small boy, a victim of the horrible incessant bombings of Aleppo (still from video taken by Mahmoud Raslan, one of the men who rescued Omran, Aleppo Media Center).  
    For these two later photographs, Kimmelman describes an initial outpouring of postings and sharing of the images on social media; but then, nothing.  The response just goes away.  There are been no meaningful policy changes to address the horrors that the photographers have captured.  Moving to video images, Kimmelman provides many examples of Syrian children and adults using Facebook and other outlets to tell their shocking stories to others around the world.  Old and young, even very young, tell us they are likely soon to die in Syria and ask for help.  Their pleas reach deaf ears.  This is the time we live in.  Images of the world's horrors are all around us, we look quickly at them, and then we turn away.   The amazing technology we have created overwhelms us and dulls our senses.  Kimmelman ends his piece with his own plea:

               We have done nothing to help. The very least we should do is look back.                                                                                                      
                                                                           
Michael Kimmelman, New York Times,                                                                                                  December 14, 2016
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     On the morning I read this article, I was deep in my search for a subject for a Christmas/Epiphany painting.  Kimmelman ended my search with his headline: How the World Closed Its Eyes to Syria's Horrors.  It was clear: I needed to do a painting that would encourage people to look back at one of the Syrian children.  I chose the image of the five-year-old boy, Omran Daqneesh, who sits all bloodied and covered with dust in the back of an ambulance, after rescuers had pulled him from the rubble of his home -- a home destroyed by the bombings of a regime or Russian military airstrike (see The Guardian, December 28, 2016, click here for that article).  

     On its own, this image is very startling, very sad, and very telling.   The boy is obviously injured and he seems completely stunned by what has happened.  It is not hard to imagine that he feels very frightened and probably very troubled about being alone; he must be so scared about what has happened to the rest of his family, his mother and father and three siblings.  His photograph pulls at the viewer's heart.  When I first saw it, I couldn't imagine drawing it.  It was just too sad.  But Kimmelman's message that Omran's photograph had faded from attention made me rethink my reluctance to work with it, to transform it as I had other photographs from the newspaper.  But what could I do to recapture others' interest in Omran and his plight?

     I let the image tell me what it needed.  Seemed clear pretty fast that this little boy needed a companion, a caring and comforting companion.  I wanted to paint him alongside someone with a special beauty, tenderness, and ability to protect.  Given my personal storehouse of visual references and the season,  Sandro Botticelli's Madonna of the Book seemed like the perfect partner for the child.  Botticelli painted this Madonna and Child in 1480-1481, now in Milan.  I adapted Botticelli's depiction of Mary (filling her out a little bit), his wonderful window, and some of his room decor.  I added light to Botticelli's very dark Renaissance background (thank you, Sam Adoquei, for that advice), and some room touches of my own; and then, of course, the boy and his ambulance seat.  I ask you to look at the painting, look at it more than once.  


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     Research for this painting drew from a wonderful catalogue of an exhibition of art about Mary across the centuries (Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea), held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.  It was given to me by my friend Kay Deaux.  The book contains helpful essays on how images of Mary have shaped Western art since the 6th century, and the social and political significance of Mary's image.   The most helpful and revealing essay was Amy G. Remensnyder's "Warrior and Diplomat:  Mary Between Islam and Christianity." 1 It filled in many of the gaps in my understanding of Islam.  This historian shows the many ways in which Mary, a Jewish historical person, is an important religious figure in Islam and Christianity.  Both faiths speak of her as exalted, a woman singled out and chosen by God for a place above others in the history of humanity.  From the Qur'an:

                        O Mary, indeed God has favored you and made you immaculate,
                           and chosen you from all the women of the world.

                                                                                             Sura 3:42

     Remensnyder describes how for centuries, across the Middle East and Europe,  Muslims and Christians have gathered together in religious shrines dedicated to Mary, to show their devotion to her.  One of these, Mary's Chapel on Lampedusa, seems especially relevant to my painting and to crises in our current world.  The Shrine on Lampedusa, a small Italian island off the coast of Tunisia, provided safety in the 17th and 18th centuries to both Muslim and Christian refugees, as each religious group fled the hostility and prisons of the other; and now, is the entry point to Europe for so many migrants, many of them Muslims,  fleeing war and oppression.  Pope Francis visited the shrine at Lampedusa in 2013 to criticize the 'globalization of indifference' to the migrants' cause, pray for the many who are risking their lives in the hope of a more just life, and praise the Italians for their rescue efforts (Remensnyder, p. 49).  


     My research also included internet searches for information on Omran Daqneesh.  I learned that on the day of the bombing, he was taken to an underground hospital (it had been previously hit by airstrikes).  The open wound on his forehead was treated and bandaged, and he was discharged.  His parents and siblings were also rescued from the rubble and treated, but his eleven-year-old brother died in hospital.  At least eight other people are said to have died in this particular bombing.  Having lost their home,  Omran's family found a smaller place in which to live.  Every week, I check the internet to see if I can learn something of what happened to this little boy since the video was made of him.  There was only one story about another bombing in Aleppo.  It was first reported that he had been killed in that later attack, but that was quickly followed by a report that he was fine.  Since then, there has been nothing on the internet.    

     But maybe there are other ways that Omran can return.  Muslims and Christians understand that the special child in Mary's lap is an important prophet who brings us needed news and knowledge.  What might this child prophet, shown here, say to us?  What might he help us understand, what might he help us do? My wish for my painting is for it to be a witness.  I want it to be a call to us to recognize and do something for Omran, and all the other children who suffer because of war and refugee status.  

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1 
A wonderful article on Mary's rich and complex role in the religious, artistic, cultural, political, and military relationships between Muslims and Christians appears in Verdon, T., Katz, M.R., Remensnyder, A. G., and Rubin, M. (2014)  Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea.   New York:  Scala Arts Publishers.

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