Ankles, Elbows, and the Human Body in general

I had a really weird dream on Friday that is still so vivid that it's going to take over my post this week. (I'll spin it into an art discussion soon enough, don't worry). In the dream, while out and about with friends, I suddenly looked down and saw that I must have gone and gotten MASSIVE tattoos on my legs! Two 1.5-inch stripes of gothic red-and-black checker patterns ringed (rung? rang?) around my ankle bones, and above them unfurled beautiful, lacy, abstracted black and blue fairy-wing patterns. These graceful arabesques overlapped each other and covered entirely the lower parts of my legs, all the way to my upper calves. I was at first entranced by my boldness in getting these tattoos, since I belong to a religion that generally disdains them (although, small side note, I absolutely love them on other people! Asking about tattoos is always fun, they are almost always very special and symbolic to their owners).

In the dream, after overcoming my surprise, I ran around for a bit, literally kicking up my heels and enjoying the flash of blue and black that ensued. I became horrified, though, when I realized my tats obstructed and distracted the eye from my legs, which, as all those who know me well know, are a source of shameless and unhealthy pride for me. (But, hey, I always make sure and give full credit to my mom and my Nike's!). Anywho, I was FURTHER horrified as this thought scrolled across my brain: blue is the hardest ink color to remove. Semi-repentant as I now was, I knew I faced a long, painful restoration process if I ever wanted my calves back to their original whiteyness. At the same time, I looked down at the insides of my arms and found similar wing designs extending out from the crooks of my elbows!!!! Apparently I'd gone tattoo crazy!


When I woke up, I checked my elbows before crawling out of bed and it turns out, I'm clean. But the whole dream, the vivid dark patterns on my skin, and the keen feelings I experienced about my tattoos really made me think about my human body, and the human body in general this weekend. It gets treated so differently by different people. In my religion, we believe our bodies are our first and most sacred gift from God, something we have been sent to Earth to learn how to operate and control. These precious gifts, the only thing we really possess, come with a full, wonderful range of sensations and passions that can either help us or possess us, depending on what we do with them. Gordon B. Hinckeley, former president of our church, had this to say about the human body in 1992:


"Have you ever contemplated the wonder of yourself, the eyes with which you see, the ears with which you hear, the voice with which you speak? No camera ever built can compare with the human eye. No method of communication ever devised can compare with the voice and the ear. No pump ever built will run as long or as efficiently as the human heart. What a remarkable thing each of us is. We can think by day and dream by night. We can speak and hear, smell and feel.

Look at your finger. The most skillful attempt to reproduce it mechanically has brought only a crude approximation. The next time you use your finger, look at it and sense the wonder of it. While sitting in Symphony Hall in Salt Lake listening to a concert, I was in a position to see the fingers of the performers in the orchestra. Whether playing the strings, the percussion instruments, the brass, the woodwinds--all involved the use of fingers. One does not have to use one's fingers to sing or whistle, but beyond that, there would be little of musical harmony without the deft action of trained fingers.
George Gallup once observed, "I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone--the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity" . Our bodies were designed by our Eternal Father to be the tabernacles of our eternal spirits." Whole talk found here.


Such I also believe. In addition, I believe it is very important to take care of our bodies, to keep them clean, to not show off every part of them to the world (DOWN WITH CLEAVAGE MONSTERS!), and to practice habits that make them function well for us. Regular exercise (doesn't have to be strenuous, peeps), a natural and balanced diet, and abstinence from anything that would lead to addiction-- yes, I include caffeine, alcohol, and white sugar here-- really help us in every aspect of our lives: emotional, social, mental, etc. Bonus: as a temple, the body really is a place that God may visit with his peace if we keep ourselves worthy of Him.


Elsewhere in the world I have observed people with very different opinions of their bodies. Not all of them are bad exactly, just... different: A prison. A sketchbook. A billboard. An adrenaline machine. Some people don't think much of their bodies at all, don't hardly use them. How sad. One thing I learned from being a lifeguard this summer and observing pool visitors is that God sure is some kind of sculptor. Truly. Everyone is built differently, and everyone is beautiful.

That is essentially the reason why people have for millenia sought to re-represent the human form in art. Portraits, history paintings, family photos, you name it. We as a species sure like to look at ourselves. With, ahem, good reason. Sometimes...

Special topic for the day: The nude. The nude is one of art's most prestigious (and snicker-evoking) subjects. It presents countless surfaces, expressions, and shapes for contemplation. The nude is considered by generations of artisans as the highest praise that their craft can render to God. To all the people I attend museums with: the naked statues standing around frozen will be most valuable to you if you simply try to imagine them as odes to God's creative powers. As man's attempt to emulate Him. As artistic explorations of one of the most riddling and enigmatic things that ever walked the earth, or took a breath, or made a sound. What about the body do you think is most fascinating? What would you try and recreate in art?

My best friend Jessica is funny, very opposite of me in the things she will geek out about. As opposed to museums and art, she will sometimes explode with great and brilliant things to say about, what else? The human body. (Science nerd!) I especially remember sitting around her room once, reading or listening to music or something, just chilling out, when I suddenly found myself struggling in vain to worm my way out of watching open heart surgeries on Youtube with her! Apparently, that's quality, uplifting entertainment for you (which I'm sure it is... when you have taken anatomy classes that prepped you to see something other than bloody goo on the screen). It sure is fun to have friends with different views of the world than you. I think I'll keep the science people around. There's a whole 'nother way of valuing the human body...




Because I couldn't escape this blog without including one small proof that my legs are awesome, er that me and Jess are BFF and that there are all sorts of different and beautiful body shapes in the world:


Have a great week!

Memory: It's A Mystery

Morris Louis, Doubt, 1959, Acrylic resin on canvas, 105 x 83 in., Courtesy Riva Yares Gallery Santa Fe, NM, Scottsdale, AZ.

The above painting is actually really big. When I used to look at it, hanging above me on the gallery wall, I always inexplicably imagined how fun it would be to cut it out of its frame and turn it into a queen-sized comforter cover. "Mmm... How glorious," I thought to myself, "to sleep under a marvelous (and heisted!) masterwork of one of America's most important modern painters."

Doubt came to the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Fall 2008 on loan from a private gallery for the show Turning Point: The Demise of Modernism and the Rebirth of Meaning in American Art (now that's an attractive title if I ever saw one... pbbbt). I had worked on this show as a curatorial intern for six months previous to that day, from January to June 2008. I had carted home massively heavy tomes about Morris Louis, wikipedia'd him and other artists til my mind was saturated with images like Louis' stately moneymaker from the Met (on the left) and Yayoi Kusama's psychedelic installation piece (on the right). I had bravely called snooty gallery after snooty gallery in an attempt to locate a Morris Louis big enough and attractive enough to get a place in our thoughtful and elegant show. Doubt was eventually secured not by me but by our fabulous contemporary curator from a wonderful gallery, and it ended up being one of my particularly favorite pieces. Working as a docent for Turning Point for the next several months, I attempted to explain to patrons of all ages and interest levels how Morris Louis removed the practice of painting even further from its traditional definition into the realm of modernism. He did not even touch the paint itself anymore! He held up the canvases and let the paints slide down them, shifting or bending them as his artistic sensibilities demanded in order to create aesthetically pleasing patterns . The results are lovely, and yes, cranky patron, your seven-year old could have done it. But he didn't, Morris did, and now we move into the conceptual art gallery. Now as I was telling you before....

...At this point, a year into making this blog, I have something to confess: I am not giving you a thorough investigation of modern art. Or even art history in general. You are instead getting a smattering of my own memories of art: the images and stories that glow in my mind and heart weeks, months, or even years later, for myriad random reasons. These are the images that compell me forward into laborious reading lists and occasionally mind-boggling seminar discussions. (It's one week into my second semester of grad school and I am already tired, can you tell? And is that a very bad sign? ... And IS anyone reading this besides my mom and Auntie J?) At some points, I still feel like a child of two worlds: I am equally at home in a cabin with my family, playing facecards and talking religion, as I am in the large and spectacular museum world, embodied so beautifully for me right now in the impassive, cylindrical Hirshhorn, the awe-inspiring National Building Museum, and 20+ other lovely historical institutions here in Washington, DC. I don't know what that means and sometimes I don't think my two comfort zones can coexist within myself forever. What I'm getting at is that I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that every time I explain to a new acquaintance that I eventually want to work either in art museums or teach at the university level, Morris Louis' Doubt floats up to center stage in my brain. Somehow, someway, someday, I will be content showing people simple but beautiful pictures like that and causing some kind of pleasant or stimulating thoughts to occur on their end. That's what I would like. Everything else about the path ahead of me is currently a mystery. And time ticks on...


The massive doors to the National Archives- yet another landmark site that I have yet to visit in this city. Sooo many of those... I'm such a bum. :) That reminds me. In March last year I posted my list of things I must do before I left DC; I just checked, and I'm currently 9 for 19. I'll let you speculate which have been done and which haven't. To that list I'm adding Move to a house, Visit the Corcoran Gallery, See the Nats win a game at home, Get a great summer internship, Go canoeing or sailing, Find a good Pho/Vietnamese restaurant and most importantly of all... KAMFLTTM.

Lindsey's 2010 Goals in 10 words (because after that we all stop caring, let's be honest).

Hope

Faith

Ambition Balanced With Acceptance

Romance

Service

Friends

Surprises

PS. A year ago today I arrived in Virginia. Suprises indeed.

The Railway

Edouard Manet's The Railway (alternative titles: Gare Saint-Lazare or Le Chemin de Fer). 1872-1873. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (I visit her on a regular basis :)

I STILL don't even know where to begin with this piece. Since the last time I mentioned her, I've logged more than 150 hours of research and writing time on its behalf, and wagered half of a class' grade on a 26-page paper about her (Update: B-. Totally Satisfied). Oddly, when I first I started to talk about this painting here on my blog in November, I referred to it as a him. During the course of our time together this work must have imbibed a bit of myself-- my passion and interest-- because it changed gender in my mind. Whatever. This bad boy is now a bad girl, at least to me.

And still, after three blissful weeks of theory-less, art-less Christmas holidays, I am overwhelmed by complicated art theory ideas whenever I start to think about The Railway.

OK, this is how we'll do it. If you'll recall, last time I asked you to make up a story about what is happening in this picture (If you didn't do it last time, take 15 seconds and do it now). I got a pretty creative smattering of responses back in November, ranging from a mother and child watching a father leave to a bubble-bath-less nanny about to quit. I call this painting a bad girl because, in actuality, she represents none of these stories. There is no story behind this work, per the artist himself!! In art history fancy-speak, this painting arrived into the art historical canon without an identifiable narrative. This was a deliberate, infuriating habit of the artist, Edouard Manet (who is a different person than the Impressionist artist Claude Monet, fyi).

Here are some of Manet's other most famous works. There are a few thematic and stylistic patterns to pick up between them: can you see any similarities?

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. 1882.

Olympia. 1863.

Luncheon on the Grass. 1863.

Here are a few I can pick out:

• All have women models with odd, half-bored looks on their faces.
• There are no identifiable narratives going on-- in fact, in most of them you kind of have no idea what's supposed to be happening.
• None of them are very strictly painted to look like reality; the artist has used a "sketchy" brushstroke instead of a careful, tedious, realistic one .
• Yes indeed, there's some nudity present. Have your laugh now, so we can get back to business.
• None of them are legendary scenes. No Greek gods here, nor biblical heroes. These are all scenes of late 19th-century Paris, Manet's own time and place.

These patterns apply to The Railway, too, can you see that? All these patterns, these artistic contrivances of Manet's, are why he is called the father of modernism: a very, VERY BIG title. Modernism, in this case, is a somewhat muddled term. For the sake of clarity, we'll just say that all art you would call modern displays, in some way, a focus on the act of making art. A modern artwork peels back the curtain on itself a little bit. It is focused on the modern time, it's own place in history.

In effect (and I'm grossly generalizing here), Manet was the first to say to himself, "Well, obviously I'm using a model, so I think I'll just paint her looking bored, because she is. I mean, I'm making her sit there for hours for heaven's sakes!" Manet also said, "Well, all the pretty art has been done. Let's loosen up the brush strokes like the 16th century Spanish painters did, add in a few nudes like the Frenchies, and just to throw everyone for a REAL loop, let's make the people in my paintings real-life Parisians, just going about their daily business." Manet took away the storyline in his paintings-- the easiest source of grandeur-- and the audience in his day and age HATED him for it. However, they eventually realized how cool it was that he was at least doing something different. "Lady and baby??" they cried, "Come one. That's not new. They're EVERYWHERE!... but they sure are pretty in this painting."

There are literally millions of articles written about Manet: his accomplishments, his scandals, and his story. It was a little daunting to try and add something to this pile of knowledge (and admittedly, I don't think I did a great job of it... got a lot to learn while in graduate school!). Funny story: when I first met with my university librarian to get started researching this painting, she laughed at me and said, "Manet, huh? It's all done. There's nothing left to write!" &!%$#..... like I'd let that stop me. Haha.

For Auntie J and those with an insatiable desire to know more, here are some of the things I said in my paper about The Railway, boiled down as much as I could get them. In bullet point form, my fav. :) For those with dwindling attention spans, just know that The Railway is a little slice of life, no more, no less, but its beautiful lines, all of its luscious contrasting spaces that go tripping across the canvas, make it no less fine of an artwork:

• It is interesting to note that neither Clark nor Fried discuss The Railway in terms of its potential symbolist meaning, something Harry Rand does in depth in Manet’s Contemplation at the Gare Saint-Lazare. Meyer Schapiro has previously addressed Manet’s symbolic content in a broad sense, stating that Manet’s subjects were not chosen on the basis of pure aesthetic appeal, but rather, because they related symbolically to the outlook of Manet himself (Schapiro 1954). Rand pushes this idea much further within the context of The Railway. His argument is that Manet was depicting his five senses.
• Rand traces this painting’s psychological effect back to Velazquez’ Los Borrochos (1628). The Velazquez image displays a compendium of the various psychological reactions to alcohol in its various figures. Rand’s link to The Railway is the grapes (aka wine) in the corner of the canvas.
• I feel that Rand’s interpretation stretches credible iconography. The Railway’s intriguing subject matter better fits Fried’s idea about instantaneousness. The way that the older female looks up at the viewer casually, finger marking the page in her book, signifies the tiny moment of time in which a viewer might behold this same scene in reality. The bars in the background and the obtrusive steam cut off further imagination about any potential significance for this depicted moment.
• The model’s cool and detached look signifies her presence as a model. All access to the meaning of this painting will pass through her, and she is rather cavalier in this duty.
• The Railway shows that Manet is still capable of quoting, although it was executed later than the 1860s. Instead of Old Masters, he now quotes his contemporaries: Puvis de Chavannes and Berthe Morisot’s 1872 post-war paintings (images below, Morisot on top, Puvis on bottom).
• Clark’s extant writing on this work starts with the note that Manet employs the controversial face of model/prostitute Victorine Meurent once again, although he renders her as benign (and as dressed) as she will ever be. Clark focuses on the modern life depicted in this image. The billowing clouds of immaterial steam and the identifiable piers on the right side of the canvas place this scene at the Gare St. Lazare railroad station, a place of transition and change that often appears in the Impressionist canvases of the same time period. He thus connects this work to the fleeting, absorptive milieu of modern Paris. I would further Clark’s Marxist reading by asking why the little girl gazes into the steam. No doubt Manet turned her little back to the viewer as a way to provoke him or her into contemplating her relation, and their own, to the Parisian spectacle of art and technology.

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Visual Scripture

How often do scriptures cause us to visualize something in our minds? Stories, people, places, things... all the time, right?? In fact, once you take out the ubiquitous "And it came to pass"'s, you'll see that our holy writ is pretty much stuffed full of amazing visual ideas and symbols. This is one of my favorite features of the scriptures. Somewhere, (you are about to see how much of a scriptorian I am NOT) it says that God speaks to his children at their level of understanding, wherever that is. I feel like he also speaks to us through all of our senses! In addition to the heart and mind, God speaks to our ears, our sense of touch (baptism by immersion, the warm hug you offer to friends in their trials), our sense of taste (sacrament emblems and visiting teaching cookies :), smell (cookies again :) and last but not least, our sight! There are a few vivid "visuals" that I count as my favorite in the scriptures. These visuals, some symbolic and some literal, I imagine again and again, and they never fail to affect me. I'm going to set a couple of them before you, and not offer any art historical dissections. Scriptures sure can stand on their own. That's one of the many reasons why I know they are not a construct of man alone. (I can't resist, however, including a few select illustrations of these scriptures' ideas. The following scattered images are the nearest that reality and the internet come to resembling the truths of these verses, at least as I imagine them. :)

D and C 84: 82-84 For, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; and the kingdoms of the world, in all their glory, are not arrayed like one of these.

For your Father, who is in heaven, knoweth that you have need of all these things. Therefore, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself.




Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.






Isaiah 49: 15-16 Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.





1st Nephi 11: 8, 33 (Lehi and Nephi's Vision) I looked and beheld a tree... and the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.

I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God.




This scripture is perhaps my favorite of all these; it comes into my mind all the time when I'm studying the stories and images of the Savior. I'm on an eternal hunt for images that really strike me as looking like Him. It was told to me once that I would recognize the Savior if I saw him before me, which was a sweet thing to be told. It's kind of cool to me to think that somewhere in the back of my subconscious mind I know what Jesus Christ looks like. BYO Illustration to this one :)

Isaiah 53: 2-3, 5 He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

New and Good Things

I have half of a post about Manet's The Railway written... but I am seriously struggling to not use high-faluting art theory when I write about it. So it's on hold for yet another week... my mind just can't pare it down yet. (Trust me, it's better this way. It's currently a really boring, watered-down version of my 26-page final Historiography paper. And NOBODY, myself included, should ever have to revisit that ugly monster). 

Instead, I want to talk about the experience of being home. I've thought about what it means to be home at least 10x a day, starting probably three weeks ago. At first, while in the throes of the miserablest round of finals ever, being home was just the chance to escape, to let my mind stop churning. Visions of watching tv, sleeping, and not having to use any more confounded multisyllabic words danced in my head.

Then, I realized that being home represented a major change, or at least a significant mile-marker, in my DC life. With the close of the semester, I said good-bye to a few good friends who will not be returning East with me next year. I also realized, kind of for the first time, that many of my bestest friends in the West have joined the march of the marrieds this past year, and thus can't come out and play with me like old times. But it's ok. We are meant to grow and learn and adventure in this life, and I am so proud of my friends for the bold steps forward they take.

Being home at this time, the end of 2009, means the close of an incredible and unique year. EASILY the fastest 365 days of my life. I have skipped through an internship at the Smithsonian, a round of unemployment, a summer as an underpaid lifeguard, and a fall as a first-year art history grad student. A lot of the time, I hardly noticed how quick and brilliant these days were. In 2009, I have changed, and changed directions, wildly... and I hope for the best. Being home for Christmas means a brief moment to stop and contemplate these amazing opportunities. It also means a chance to express my gratitude for the "back-east" friends I have out there, who make the cold and the distance and the obnoxious DC materialism/professionalism so worth it (special shout-out to Marissa, Jenni, Maggie, and Dani, my East Coast blog buddies :)

Finally, being home allows me to re-learn the wonderful, slightly cheesy but very true lesson: that friends who love each other are never far apart at heart. It doesn't matter that I only got to see my parents four times this year; when I came home, it's as if I never left! Magic! I've changed, it's true, but they love my changes, or at least they'll want to gab about the changes. :) DC '09 taught me that your heart will ALWAYS expand to fit whenever you find something new to care about. Miraculously, none of the older things in there have to be kicked out. What a glorious gift that is, to be able to grow in love, and never be bounded. There are always new people to serve, to laugh with, to explore, and to love. That must be why Heavenly Father's work and glory is to bring about the eternal life of his children. He's really figured it out: the best thing in life is to love as many little humans as possible, and thus keep one's heart growing.

I read over my 2008 journal this morning. Apparently, on Thursday, November 6th, I felt I had the greatest day of my life. Here is a selection of that entry, so you can see why:

"I worked more, kept busy, shared my friendship bread, went and gabbed with Dani at her desk at the Wilk, and walked home in the beautifully brisk air. And on that walk home... Milena, the Director of Public Programs at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC called me to set up an appointment for a phone interview... then we just decided to interview right then. She told me all about the kinds of things I'd be doing, and as we talked, I felt this unbelievable sense that I could not have ASKED for a better internship, one more suited to my current educational, professional, or social needs :) Heavenly Father LOVES me! I started screaming and jumping afterwards, and called the wonderful parents who support me. Mom cried she felt it was so right, so perfect.

"I have officially changed my life plan today- gonna go down a road in January I never dreamed of. It feels incredible, and very right. Ah faith. Bless it. Oh, and I listened to the great art critic Michael Fried give a lecture on High Modernism and Minimalism at the MoA tonight. I felt completely at home there. I belong in that big, beautiful world. I'm SO Happy. PS Milena was SO pleasant to talk to. I'm really looking forward to working with her. PPS Jessica is sad for me to go... and that's why I choose her as my best friend."

I've learned, taught, explored, loved, been accepted to and attended one brutal semester of grad school since January. Frankly, it has worn me out to skin and bones, and I am happily at home in order to recoup and fatten up. Next year's resolution, among several, is to find better balance between all of these things. While in DC a friend really alerted me to the value of balance; I have the nerdy tendency of focusing too closely on my art world (well... once in a while :). I've got a lot to see of life yet, and many people to love and serve.  I am extremely grateful to know that I have a Savior whom I might lean upon as I try to gain strength and accomplish great things. I am so happy to be home for Christmas, so that I might celebrate His birth with those I love. And I am ridiculously excited for the new and good things to come. Merry Christmas all.

Me at the Vegas Bowl last night- BYU vs. Oregon State. I LOVE that the Momo crowd causes the beer signs to be turned off and the hot chocolate ones to be haphazardly created.

Me and Spence after rushing the field. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO COLD! But notice the score in the upper right hand side- Cougs 44, Beavers 20! Just baaaaaarely worth it. :)

PS Please excuse the gushyness of this post. "I just have a lot of feelings." What movie?? Haha

Finals are Over.

Courtesy of a Google image search for "grief."

 I don't even want to talk about it. It was that awful. Grad school is not for the faint of heart.

On the other hand............. I'm going back to New York and then onto Vegas this week! Oh happy day! So happy I'm actually enjoying listening to this:

Merry Christmas. :)

Yellow and Blue

"Besides, I don't even like the colors green and red together. The summer colors, Yellow, Green, and Blue are SO much prettier to look at!"

- That was one line of an argument I submitted to someone this weekend about why I'm Grinchy. When you spend entire weeks and eventually entire years of your life looking at pigments and daubs and brushstrokes of colors, you start to get a feel of what is attractive to you optically. I've got my optical allurements down pat: Blacks and whites over browns, always. Jewel tones over pastels.  Contrasting colors will always catch my eye better than well-behaved, blended, harmonious colors. Grey is in fact my favorite color, because of the peculiar power it has to make every other color that it is laid down next to just POP. I love contrast all the way around, which is probably the reason I am so obsessed with the painter Gene Davis, see his picture above. Full of contrasts- each color is laid next to another that will make its edges shimmer.  In short, I like my colors to convey action, daring, boldness, and honesty. It can be argued that even my color tastes convey a sense of my summer-obsession (wow. That sentence reads like something straight out of one of my research papers. Meh. I'm leaving it in.). Winter you just sit around in the house looking at the murky mix of brown, green, and red. Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.

Pretty as they might have been, you may have noticed when you first arrived on this blog today that I took down the post-colonial ballerinas from the top of my blog and replaced them with blue, which has then, as is customary, been overlaid by my favorite bright yellow title. I feel right at home with this arrangement.

Guess what? There's an art story to go with the above blue. A good story. This blue has a name: IKb, pronounced "ick-Bee" (which also happens to be the name of a beta fish residing on the GW Art History Dept's front desk). IKb, which stands for International Klein Blue, was invented last century.  Yes, that's right. The color was invented by the French artist Yves Klein (well, no, it was invented by chemists, under Klein's supervision. Then he humbly named it after himself.) Yves Klein is an interesting character in the history of modern art, and his IKblue stands as one of his most crowning achievements. In fact, if I had to put money on what art history books fifty years from now will still say about him, I would bet that he's going down for his use of IKb. This IKb color is made of a pigment suspended in a chemical so that there's pretty much NO reflection coming off a canvas covered in it. Looking at his monochrome blue paintings is like looking at velvet, or the sky, or something. You know how velvet just looks... deeper and shadowy-er than other materials? Yea. Very cool effect. Not reproducible on a computer, but the above was a fairly decent approximation.

One of the most vivid memories I took away from my modern art class at BYU, the first upper-level art history class I ever took, was my Professor Magleby showing us pictures of Yves Klein at work and then announcing, "And here we have Yves Klein, I can't stand him. Such a misogynist. Moving on..." and then we moved on to someone else.

Kind of shocking, you'd think, for a teacher to dismiss someone currently deemed very important to the arc of art history! (The Hirshhorn, in fact, has a giant retrospective of Yves Klein's career coming up I think next year). But when I tell you that the picture Magleby had put up was a picture of Yves Klein, dressed in a tux complete with white gloves, standing over a white-paper-covered floor and ordering around nude women covered in IKb (all done in front of an audience), you may understand. Bleeeeeeeeh.

Nevertheless, like I said, interesting character, which makes for a historically resilient artist. Klein had lots of crazy post-modern ideas about art. He started with these "anthropomorphisms": the paintings of naked people's imprints on canvases (sometimes he'd do these himself... so I guess he can't be labeled a complete jerk). Sometimes Klein would paint with certain chemicals on specially prepared surfaces and then set the whole thing on fire, just to see how the paints changed (see left image,
Untitled fire color painting, 1962, Charred dry pigment in synthetic resin with metallic paint on asbestos-coated paper on board, from the MOMA collection). Klein also did lots of photomontages where it looks like he's leaping off buildings or doing other crazy feats. He had interests in Judo, Oriental philosophy, and the hereafter. In addition, he was probably a total misogynist; the whole ordering women around was a conceptual stunt meant to show off that artists in the sixties, in the now, didn't even NEED to touch the canvas to be considered artists anymore. Whatever, dude. Happy that his time has passed. But he did leave an imprint (I joke!) and a color behind him, a pretty summery color, so he has earned this tiny mention on my blog. And now, it's finals week, and I am putting the finishing touches on my massive essay about Manet. After I have recovered a few of my currently-comatose brain cells, I'll tell you about The Railway. Next time. :) Have a great week everyone!

Down with Chipmunks!

I'm gonna pull another Hermione and start a club for a very underrepresented portion of society. You may now address me as Lindsey, the President of SPARCL: The Society for the Protection of Anxiety-Ridden Christmas Listeners.

The following was going to be my Facebook status for this week, but it was too long to fit, so I'm shuffling it over to the blog, because I feel this is a VERY important minority opinion that too few appreciate:

Lindsey Ann C_________ is one of those Grinches who HATES listening to Christmas music before the 22nd of December. Before you protest, check it: Christmas is a two-day holiday stretched into a month-and-a-half long music and marketing marathon... and y'all know it. Now, I certainly believe in the reason for the season, but I'd rather focus musically on him on his birthday, and maybe on the eve of his birthday, by singing hymns around a piano with loved ones. I'd rather not be subjected to Mariah and Archuletta and the Chipmunks warbling about nothing but cheer for weeks beforehand.The same fifteen songs get remixed over and over again by a galaxy of pop stars hoping to turn another million dollar iTunes profit, and it is TORTURE for us Grinches! Have mercy on us! The radios on my bus started playing carols on the 20th of freaking November this year, for crying out loud!!! I had to take midterms with Paul McCartney's truly galling "Wonderful Christmastime" rolling around in my brain!!! November 20th is far enough back into autumn territory to turn anyone into a Grinch, if they hadn't been already. I have a life. And other emotions to stoke via my music selection. Thank you. PS this rant is not directed at you, cheery Christmas lovers. I hope you know that. It's at the marketing machine and the retailers who tricked us all into thinking nothing except "Snow+Buy presents" since November 20th.

Oh man she's cute. Replace the bulb she's holding with this one and you'll get a perfect illustration of how I feel right now:

Well, insert "Music" underneath "Christmas" right here^ aaaaand there you go. Welcome to my world. It's not such a bad place, you know. It has a lot of different music playing all the time. Very enjoyable.

Auntie J, I promise the story behind Manet's The Railway is coming soon. And it will not be what you expect. Get excited!

This is the first Ben Shahn painting I ever saw... Always loved it.

They totally have little personalities, don't they??

Happy Thanksgiving! And while we're at it, Happy Black Friday, to all my cart-pushing, credit-card-swiping, shopaholic friends. :) I'll be in New York City and New Jersey this weekend, living the life. Adios.

..... NOT adios. My mom caught me- I did indeed once replicate the artwork above, in color, for an art class. The assignment was to combine the painting techniques of two different artists into a single, original work. I decided to combine the blackboard-like scratchy lines and vivid colors of Paul Klee's The Golden Fish, 1925 (at left) with the delightful little anthropomorphic carts depicted by Ben Shahn in Supermarket, 1950 (aka the one above. Like I said, loved it at first sight). Welcome to pretty much my only foray into the art world:

Lindsey C_______. The Golden Shopping Cart. 2007. Oil on paper.

FEMINISM.

That's quite the loaded title, huh? I guess I've always known I would have to unpack my thoughts about that subject (slash methodology) sometime, and, for several reasons you are about to understand, today is that day. The writer's fire is burning me up, and it's burning pink. :)

I am not a feminist. Not really. It feels so wrong to write that down, but it's important to start off there. This morning, when I glanced at the mobile I have hanging in my room-- a little contraption of coat hangers, string, photos, and postcards I collected on my European study abroad-- a strange pattern jumped out at me. Of the ten pictures I've got spinning around in little orbits, seven of them feature women. 70%. I had seven women gazing out at me this morning. I hung them there two years ago upon my return from my glorious art history study abroad in Europe. Obviously, though I might not have been cognizant of it, the idea of womanhood meant something to me.

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with Pearl Earring

Matthias Grunewald, The Concert of Angels and The Nativity


Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars


Nicolas de Stael, Portrait d'Anne (Can you see her in there??)


Postcard of Marie Antionette from Versailles


Photo of the sculptor Camille Claudel, who has one of the most tragic and epic stories in all of art history- I fell in love with her story way back in my freshman Humanities class.

Alfred Stevens, Mary Magdalene

I'm refraining from completing the second half of my post about Manet's The Railway this week in order to talk about feminism. Tiny juicy piece of gossip, though: the model Manet uses in The Railway (the model of the older girl) was a famous mid-19th-century socialite and prostitute named Victorine Meurant. She also happened to be the mistress of Alfred Stevens, who painted the hauntingly beautiful picture of Mary Magdalene above. Fun connections!!!

If you caught me offguard and asked me my opinion about feminists, I'd no doubt respond in the same tongue-in-cheek way that the Marxist art historian T. J. Clark did: to me, they're "shrill" characters. And sometimes I think their energy is mis-focused and borders on greed,

Then... if you prod me further, and make me think about it, I'll remember and admit that my field, art history, actually owes a huge debt to feminists. Their work, their determination, changed the way we look at art. They pointed out to the unconscious public that it set WAAAAAY too much store in artwork made by "geniuses," who all turned out to be men. White, rich men that all knew each other. (Tangent: in my opinion, genius is not even a real trait. You've got skill, both inborn and developed, and then there's usually luck involved... and showmanship and business acumen and pure passion and tenacity. THOSE things are responsible for the world's great art. Not some mystically-instilled germ of genius that infects only a sliver of the population. Such a notion is purely the construct of a romanticized history.)

Feminists were the first people to point out that there are other things, other people with unique stories, that are worth studying. What about the daughter of an artist who was denied the ability to study like men but managed to slip her art into her father's fray anyways? (Her name was Artemisia Gentileschi). What about slaves who did not have access to training or museum collections at all, but focused their creative energy and skills on quilt-making, the only media they had at their disposal?

Feminists were the first group of intellectuals to call attention to the fact that our society carries a viral amount of institutional biases. They highlighted very interesting flaws in academia's working vocabulary and tools of analysis. The landmark feminist art text is titled Old Mistresses... which in and of itself points out an immediate, unfortunate difference in society's perception of the two genders. How far the gap is between "Old Master" and "Old Mistress"!! Do you see what they're driving at yet? :) If you get nothing else from feminism, let it be this lesson: there's so much more out there to see and do and understand and appreciate than society and history currently advocates!

But I've been talking about feminism in art history. Feminism in general is an overarching study of how being female impacts your life and the world, and I can't think of a time in history where there is a bigger need for such research. Everything vital to our gender is currently under intense scrutiny and even assault by the world at large: Family structure. Integrity. Chastity. Lady-like grace (see every image of Lindsay Lohan ever published for bad examples). Love. Safety. Independence. Motherhood.

The main reason for this post today was my discovery that my alma mater, Brigham Young University, is severely cutting back (and potentially disbanding) its Women's Research Institute. By doing so, as a colleague on facebook noted, my school is essentially confirming the institutional bias that Accounting and MFHD are the only true lifepaths worth pursuing. PSH. I'm really disappointed with BYU for this decision (although I'm sure there are at least a few legit reasons for it, including lack of budget, interest, and/or qualified professors.) But I can't help but think of the times I've succeeded at that school, how good I felt when I worked hard, and how many girls all over the world lack that same feeling of confidence and hope. I have always been so proud of my school for their international educational focus, for the seriousness with which the faculty and staff takes the mandate to bring light to the world. (There's a link to petition for you to sign if you agree with me at the bottom of this post, in the pink box).

I don't judge or hate men for doing what they're doing, and I firmly believe that gender, and gender differences, are God-given and should be celebrated. Most importantly, I feel that the best and purest achievements of humanity only come when all the disparate parts of our race-- the different sexes, education levels, ethnicities, languages, interests, temperaments, etc.-- work together, something even the field of feminism, colorful though it may be, is very, very right about advocating. (Ps Baby-making! The perfect example of us working togeter to achieve great things! hee hee hee :) People only find their deepest, most satisfying peace when honestly, diligently pursuing the path God has laid out for them. I am grateful for that knowledge, though it comes with great responsibility.

I want to close with a story, one I wish BYU understood better. This is the story of one of the most aha! moments of my entire internship at the Hirshhorn. It is within this story that I hope you will see the need for the research and ideas that organizations like the Women's Research Institute puts forward:

I participated in a 6-week training course to be an Interpretive Guide while at the Hirshhorn (remember how I used to stroll the galleries 12 hours a week and talk to strangers about the art? Yea. That.) Me, four other college students, four older (aka age 55-75) long-time docents (all women, and all hilarious!), and two full-time education staffers all congregated every Monday to discuss the Louise Bourgeois exhibition, and the different methodologies we could use to encourage people to think about her art. The most interesting conversation we as a group ever had, hands down, was when we looked at Louise Bourgeois' art through feminism. The conversation turned to feminism itself, and it was soon discovered that all five of the younger participants were reluctant to claim any adherence to feminism as a belief system. Like I said, it's shrill.

The older ladies were AGHAST. They truly could not believe we eschewed advocacy for womens' rights. "You don't understand," explained the eldest docent, "when I was a newly divorced mother I had to undergo birth control and pregnancy tests before they would even consider me for my house loan!!!" (Can you believe that?? Such an appalling invasion of privacy!!) It was such an interesting dynamic in that classroom; a really tense atmosphere for quite a while, as us the young and they the old poked and prodded each others' stands regarding activism, propriety, and womanhood. Eventually I could see the other ladies start to form this contemptuous assumption in their minds: "Oh. They aren't feminists yet because they haven't NEEDED to be."

I decided to be the brave young one to attempt a reconciliation, especially since the topic was veering towards a veneration of Roe v. Wade as the supreme moment of liberation and triumph for feminism, something I disagree with. "You know," I started, "I think there are various types of feminism today, and our younger generation works within those, without realizing it. I can totally recognize that we build upon the achievements of your generation and we are so thankful for that! I belong to the largest women's organization in the world, and it's called the Relief Society, it's part of my church. Its members meet together weekly all over the world to teach one another about family skills and avoiding domestic abuse. It's also where we make friends and celebrate God, who loves his daughters." Silence reigned for a few seconds. I couldn't believe I'd just said that. I usually let my religion lie low in my art circles, because Mormonism has way too many stereotypes that I don't like people judging me by (it's always a fun moment when art friends find out I'm Mormon LATER, after getting to know ME. I can see their eyes widen as they realize actual Mormons don't conform to stereotypes). Tangent.

The older ladies grudgingly assented to my olive branch of sorts. I swallowed my surprise that the first time I "came out" about my religion was related to feminism of all things. And that moment became the turning point in the day's discussion. Feminism, it was agreed, can analyze and celebrate many different aspects of womanhood. In my final opinion (phew! I've given you a lot today!), its greatest moment of success is when the little people, the regular participants of every-day life, open their minds a little bit and discover their innate ability to stand up for themselves and move forward and do something great, all thanks to that knowledge and confidence they gained from considering gender differences, qualities, and achievements.

This is hilarious, and a fitting final image:



Congrats if you made it through this. You are the few, the brave, the enlightened, and, for lack of a better word, the SEXY!!! Hahahahahaha. Also, it begs to be stated: feminism is not for the ladies alone. I am so appreciative of the many men in my life who take the time to respect women and all the unique things we are capable of. Like I said, we work better when we work together!!

Update: after reading over a lot of the official BYU press releases on this decision, I've come to the conclusion that this move is simply bad taste on the part of the administration, who sees the WRI as a derelict flagship. Time and again they assure the public that funds for research will be more widely available, and I sure hope that will really be the case! Good luck to them.

Check out this bad boy...

Voici:

Is it weird that I refer to this work in masculine terms when it in fact depicts two females? No, I don't think so. No, I don't understand why I just did that. I just know you may officially refer to "him"-- or it, if you prefer me to be more gender-sensitive-- as Edouard Manet's career-changing painting The Railway (1872-73), located at this moment downtown in the National Gallery of Art, two blocks from my work at the NBM.

Take 30 seconds and spin me a story about this scene. Tell me in a few words your interpretation of what is going on within, according to your eyes. (Pleeeeease!)

I'm not gonna tell you what I know about it this week. I'm more interested in what y'all can come up with. See, this guy is what currently occupies all my time, talents, and thoughts (well, not ALL my thoughts... sometimes I eat. And teach. And do other fun stuff :) He is the subject of my massive historiography paper/presentation and basically my entire final grade rests upon the types of new ideas I can find within its smokey, colorful contours. I am currently busy surveying what all the smart people have to say about it, in aaaaaall the long decades since its creation. Somehow I've got to find something they've missed and expound upon it (sooooo much reading required to do so... I love reading. I love reading, I swear I do!). It continually amazes me how many cool socio-historical facts the big-league art historians can come up with to make you see deeper and deeper into a work like this. It also amazes me just where these professionals have to dig in order to come up with said facts. I have so much to learn about researching.

But in the meantime, we're just gonna enjoy the beauties of a very important work of art, which is an experience we should always start with, anyways! Take another few looks at this amazing work:


Think about it. I sure am.

All I know is, I'm quickly becoming obsessed with Monsieur Manet. SO fabulous. I'll tell you about him soon! Have a great week!