Dying to See You

A couple of months ago, the conservator of Lincoln Center's artworks collaborated with me on a sort of VIP Art & Architecture tour, so I got a chance beforehand to chat with him. I asked him about this painting, and he said it likely won't be returning. He also said the Yaacov Agam sculpture, Three X Three Interplay (1971), probably won't be coming back either, which I also find very disappointing. He said the Agam sculpture is very large and there really is no place for it anymore. I really think they should have created a new spot for it. For the painting this post discusses, there does happen to be a perfect spot, at the western end of Alice Tully Hall's lobby, in a curved alcove that I believe contains doorways to back offices. He said that there was some resistance on the part of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro to reintroducing this painting in the space for some reason.

As much as I think I've made clear the enormous respect I have for this trio of architects, I have to say, I'm disappointed. Part of my defense of this painting is selfish, because I would LOVE the opportunity to tell this wonderfully disturbing story to the snotty, uninterested high school kids with whom I often have to contend. But the other part is that I think it's a brilliant piece, suited very well to the space. The third argument I'll make is that the painting was a gift from the artist to Lincoln Center. To just callously throw it away as a useless addition to the building is kind of a slap in the face of this gracious gesture. And the point remains that there is a perfect place to re-hang it, so there is no excuse.

I do feel justified in calling for this painting to be hung once again in Alice Tully Hall. At this point, I suspect it never will be. I hinted at this before, but since I probably won't have the opportunity to ever tell this story on one of my tours, I thought I'd share with you the (here revised) essay I wrote about it in creating the Art & Architecture Tour for Lincoln Center.

The piece I'm referring to is Black Dahlia (acrylic on canvas, 1971) by Gene Davis.

"What? THIS is the piece you're defending?" Yes, this is the piece.

First of all, Gene Davis (1920-1985) was from the Washington Color School of painters from D.C. along with Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, and others. He started out as a sports journalist. As a writer he also covered the Roosevelt and Truman presidential administrations and often played poker with Harry Truman. He worked predominantly in acrylic.

Vertical lines fascinated Davis because he felt that they're conceptually infinite. His pieces therefore draw a contrast between the limits of the physical painting and the conceptual limitlessness of the lines in them. They aren't canvases dissected by lines. They're lines represented on the canvas that theoretically extend beyond its borders. He pushed this idea to its extremes in both directions of scale. In 1972, his Niagara, painted at a parking lot in Lewiston, New York, was the largest painting ever created at 43,680 square feet (4058 square meters). His smallest works were as tiny as three eighths of an inch square (a .95 centimeter square). Likewise, Tully is the venue in the complex dedicated to the smallest of the classical music performance types, Chamber Music, a question of scale.

Davis' works also often have musical themes: Banjo, Black Grey Beat, Solar Beat, Sonata, Sun Sonata, Yukon Sonata, etc. The vertical bars of color form obviously rhythmic patterns across the canvases. The connection may be that, like his paintings, music is orderly and restricted in form yet expansive and expressive in concept and meaning.

There are some deep reddish-purple dahlias said to be "black" like their counterparts in the rose and tulip families. The secondary level of signification no doubt appealed to Davis, but this botanist reference is so uncommon as to make the following explanation infinitely more probable. Many of you, especially from the West Coast, already know where I'm going. Surprisingly, considering my fascination with True Crime and anything disturbing, I'd not ever heard this story before I began to research this painting. The "Black Dahlia" was Elizabeth Short (1924-1947).

Little is known about her life, except that she moved around the country quite frequently as a teenager and had relationships with quite a few military men, leading some to speculate that she was a prostitute. This was later refuted by grand jury reports. A telegram sent by Short places her in Washington, D.C. around 1944. Although he was still only fourteen, there remains the possibility that Davis knew her, or at the very least, that he believed he might have met her. She was found dead in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, at the age of twenty-three.

Her body was horribly mutilated. She was cut in half at the mid-section, all the blood had been drained from her body, and her face had been cut from the sides of her mouth all the way to her ears, what's known as a "Glasgow Smile." Because she liked to dress in all black, possibly she was nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" at a Long Beach drugstore where she hung out, as a play on the title of the currently-running film The Blue Dahlia (1946), starring Alad Ladd and Veronica Lake. In other accounts, newspaper reporters covering the murder coined the nickname.

At the time, it was the largest murder investigation ever conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and were questioned. Around sixty people falsely confessed to the crime. In his book, Black Dahlia Avenger, published in 2003, Los Angeles police officer Steve Hodel claimed that his father, psychiatrist George Hodel, had murdered Short. The claim was never substantiated. Surrealist photographer Man Ray, who was very close with Hodel, has also been suggested as the killer. The crime remains unsolved to this day.

In their 2006 book, Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder, authors Mark Nelson and Sarah Bayliss put forth a fascinating theory. Numerous details about the way Short's body was found, with her arms posed above her head and the ways that her body was mutilated, have direct correlations with specific works by surrealist artists. They therefore propose that Short's killer was well acquainted with the work of the surrealists (as was Hodel), and that the murder itself had been an extremely twisted work of surrealist art. The book's title comes from the parlor game played by the surrealists wherein each participant writes one word on a folded piece of paper, so that when unfolded, a nonsensical sentence has been composed. The authors go on to suggest the possibility that, similarly, Short's body had been passed around amongst a whole group of people, each of whom performed some disturbing act of surrealist-inspired mutilation to her cadaver.

Marcel Duchamp's final work, Étant donnés (probably NSFW, unless you work in an art gallery), installed posthumously at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is suspiciously and eerily similar to Short's crime scene.

In a brief and pleasant email correspondence with Nelson, he revealed to me the possible Washington, D.C. connection with Davis. The day I received my copy of Exquisite Corpse in the mail, my curiosity took hold and I began reading. I literally could not put it back down again, and finished the entire book that evening, something I never, ever do. For anyone interested in Art History and especially surrealism, the macabre or disturbing, or True Crime, I must highly recommend this brilliant and fascinating read. Although maybe something for the weak of constitution to avoid, the photos are illustrative but (purposely) not particularly the most graphic or vomit-inducing.

I'd also like to add a brief discussion of this crime from a Feminist perspective. I won't delve deeply, I think that's better handled by someone more informed than myself. But I think what this violent act says about both the Hollywood system and the Art World is quite poignant. It's how the female body in this case was viewed as a purely aesthetic object to it's most horrifying conclusion. Short's body was the artwork, and it had to be devoured, destroyed in order to be so. In fact, the very destruction of her body was the work's most defining feature. 

In our day and age, we've seen how the mutilation of one's body falls fairly easily into the category of Art. Tattoos and piercings are great examples, not to mention of course cosmetic surgery of any kind, but especially the most extreme cases. Note Jocelyn Wildenstein. In some cases, indeed the very act of mutilating one's body as it might be in a work of Performance Art clearly takes the name. 

From the other direction, most serial killers consider what they do to be a cathartic, precise, sick sort of art form. Ed Gein was, to be far too generous, a fashion and furniture designer (as were some of the nazis). But to my mind, only in the case of the Black Dahlia murder do all these troublesome qualities come together to make one powerful, shocking statement about American popular culture's view of and attitudes toward the Female Body. It alone speaks perhaps more than any other psychotic act of how and to what extent our cultural machine feels the Female Body should be (allows it to be) used and consumed, at least how it did in the 1940s.

On a much lighter note, due to the unbelievably morbid subject of this Gene Davis painting, one might be inclined to suggest that Davis was almost playing a practical joke on Lincoln Center, and that those in charge of curating the artworks were and still are unaware of this explanation (not even the published author of the book on LC's artworks had any idea about it when I mentioned it to him).

Davis is clearly saying something very specific about the piece by giving it such a provocative title. It may be proposed that the physicality of the stretched canvas is deliberate and very consciously considered. Its proportions necessarily cut the vertical lines into particular lengths, a key element in the artistic expression of the piece. At the same time, to cut the canvas into specific proportions may be akin to "murdering" the lines, in that it robs them of the infinity Davis praised them for having. In this sense, representing the lines in a painting becomes murder with an artistic purpose, much like the above theories surrounding the fate of Elizabeth Short.

Although no one who could make the final decision will likely ever read this, I do hope I've made my case for the reintroduction of Black Dahlia to the beautifully-renovated Alice Tully Hall. Perhaps I should get a petition going.

[EDIT: I found it. Black Dahlia is now hanging in a hallway on the ninth floor of the Rose Building at the northwest corner of the campus. It's the floor containing Lincoln Center administrative offices and conference rooms. I discovered it there purely by accident: "wait a minute, that's the Gene Davis painting!" Memorizing the exact colors, widths, and arrangement of the lines to compare with the image above was not easy, but luckily I'm a visual thinker.]

©2010, Ryan Witte

Support

James Vanderberg, In the Dark in the Light

Back to our regularly scheduled programming shortly, but my friend and coworker, James Vanderberg, is a talented painter doing some very interesting work in abstraction with an adept eye for color. He's applied for a grant and a chance at a solo exhibition, but needs votes. Please check out his portfolio here and if you'd like, give him a nice strong vote. For the record, I get no benefit out of it if you do, I just think his work is solid and deserves it.

Surgical Precision

Another of the artists found at the Amory Show whose work truly impressed me was Daniel Zeller. I'm very glad to have interviewed him. His were some of the most thoughtful, in-depth answers I've ever gotten in an interview, and it was quite fun. Here's my conversation with Zeller:

Ryan Witte: You just got married. How was the wedding?

Daniel Zeller: It was great.

RW: Glad to hear it all went well, and no one got hammered and fell into the cake...or...did they?

DZ: Some folks got a little hammered, but no major disasters--and we had cupcakes instead of a cake, so that whole problem was avoided.

RW: Did each cupcake have a tiny bride and groom on it?

DZ: No, but we did have them all arranged on a "tree."

RW: Oh...I didn't understand what you meant at first. That sounds pretty cool, actually. Where did you have it?

Daniel Zeller, Location Management (2007, graphite on paper), most all images can be clicked for larger views.

DZ: We were married at a day camp called The Village at Boulder Ridge in Barkhamsted, Connecticut (they cater events on weekends). It was fun. They have a climbing wall with a zip line and a pond with an inflatable iceberg for climbing on.

RW: ...And Mini-Golf!

DZ: No Mini-Golf, but they did have bocce.

RW: Oh, there's a Mini-Golf picture on the website...

DZ: Huh, I must have been too preoccupied to notice.

RW: I guess all that pesky getting-married business distracted you from the Mini-Golf. How did you two meet?

DZ: Mika [Yokobori] and I actually met at Pierogi.

RW: Are you both artists?

DZ: She is an artist. We do share certain aesthetic sensibilities. You can see some of her work at [her website].

RW: I see you were born in California. Are you now based in Williamsburg, in the vicinity of Pierogi?

DZ: We currently live in Williamsburg--for three years now. Both our apartment and my studio are indeed quite close to Pierogi. Prior to that, I spent thirteen years in DUMBO, in a very affordable live/ work space that rapidly became unaffordable.

RW: Yeah, it seems neighborhoods all over the city are becoming unaffordable, one by one. I really don't get how enough people to fill up the island of Manhattan are either making three million dollars a year or are willing to have five roommates in a closet-sized studio apartment.

DZ: I've wondered about that, as well. Ah, real estate, the perpetual New York conundrum.

RW: Amen. I'd imagine the type of work you do requires very specific and controlled working conditions. Could you describe briefly where and how you typically work on a piece?

DZ: I do prefer a quiet studio (I'm currently subletting a space from a friend, but will soon be looking to move) where I have some control over what I'm hearing. I listen to a lot of NPR and lots of different kinds of music while I'm working.

RW: It's funny, you know I think every single American artist I've interviewed so far has mentioned listening to NPR. It must be one of the job requirements.

DZ: Maybe we're all Liberals, but I think it's more that they seem to cover the broadest range of topics...and getting up to change the station is a pain.

On very large drawings I work on the wall, mostly standing--on milk crates to reach higher--sometimes sitting. For everything else I work sitting at a nice big drafting table that I managed to find used. It's awesome. It's spring-loaded and adjusts with the release of a single lever. I like to work on several pieces concurrently, to be able to switch back and forth between sitting and standing. It can get tedious to be in the same position for too long.

RW: Yes, I'd think that'd be a one-way ticket to debilitating back problems.

DZ: Back, neck, shoulder, eye, hand--not necessarily in that order.

RW: Am I correct that you begin with an ink drawing and the acrylic color goes in toward the end?

Embedded Inquiry (2008, ink and acrylic on paper)

DZ: I start the ink drawings with line work and outlines that will define where color is added, but I tend to work in patches, adding color as I go. Color is still relatively new to me, and I like to see how different ones work against each other as the drawing develops.

RW: Do you have one type of pen or instrument you prefer or do you like to switch it up?

DZ: Although I'm starting to use a brush just a little where there are wider areas to be filled, I work on the ink drawings almost exclusively with rapidograph pens. They are supremely annoying to maintain...

RW: [LOL] I think I still have a set of rapidograph pens around here someplace. I always found them extremely irritating.

DZ: Yes, they can suck, but when they are working, they rule...I've found that they are great for making consistent and fine lines, especially the Rotring brand. Those use an ink cartridge, so unfortunately, the colors are quite limited. For filling, I mostly use the Koh-I-Noor brand. They have a reservoir that can be refilled with any color that I can mix and different nib sizes allowing for more or less flow.

Occupational Hazard (2008, graphite on paper on panel)

RW: While looking at your piece at the Armory Show, Occupational Hazard, with its extremely intense hatchwork, my friend and I were joking that it appears you might have an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Would you care to defend yourself?

Occupational Hazard [detail]

DZ: I have no defense against Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, though I would probably describe it as Obsessive-Compulsive Order or Syndrome or something.

RW: I like that, "Obsessive-Compulsive Order."

Occupational Hazard [detail]

DZ: I think we all probably have some degree of it, but I don't think mine is too severe. I have always been attracted to imagery that is packed with detail, so the work I make is the work I want to see. I've had to learn some strategies for being able to sit or stand for hours, making repetitive gestures. But without a pre-existing tendency for Obsessive-Compulsiveness, I don't think I'd have even wanted to try.

RW: You may be pleased to know that, after studying your work much more closely yesterday, last night it showed up in one of my dreams.

I think it was most because of this one: Diffusive Cluster (2007, ink and acrylic on paper). I stared at it for a very long time. The colored sections began to appear as flat plateaus, flush with the surface of the paper. The surrounding lines recede away from the viewer as valleys, similar to a topological map. Trying to get my brain to wrap around the three-dimensional forms I think may have done something to my head.

DZ: I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sorry that something I drew showed up in someone else's dream. I dream some of this imagery, as well, and I'm never quite sure what it means.

RW: Don't worry, I thought it was kind of cool, actually. I'm tempted to believe that certain imagery activates something deeper, neurologically, in the brain and makes a kind of imprint--much the same way that certain songs or jingles get stuck in one's head more than others.

DZ: Someone once told me that ninety percent (or most, anyway) of brain activity happens below the conscious level, and I tend to believe it. It would make sense that studying any complex system or image would put that ninety percent to work. We'd be unaware that we were still thinking about it. I think that we evolved to be able to navigate within a very complex three-dimensional environment, and our brains are wired to retain a lot of this information. It's only fairly recently--in terms of evolutionary time--that we've been making and referring to two-dimensional representations of our world, and very recently since we've had the kinds of imagery that we can create today, through modern technology. We can translate it, and even mostly understand it, but who knows how it is affecting our subconscious?

RW: Honestly, I think you hit the nail right on the head. The three-dimensional world that the human brain is set up to interpret is external to us and "real," at least in a physical, non-philosophical sense. But two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional worlds, as we interpret them, exist only inside our brains. It would make sense that they would get stuck there a little more easily, since that's where they're "born," in a way.

Do you find that after a certain point in the process of creating a piece, the structures in it get fused in your brain, or is it more of a sort of Zen experience, more mechanical?

DZ: I'm pretty sure that many of the structures that I work with are fused in my brain. A large part of the fun of making drawings, for me, is in trying to figure out where they are going as I'm working. The process of physically putting marks on paper is so extremely slow compared to the brain's ability to envision all the possible futures that could manifest on the page. I think it does end up being a Zen-like experience, perhaps in a similar way that driving long distances can be: one has to be very focussed, but at the same time, parts of the brain are liberated to roam and explore. It's being in the moment and out of it at the same time.

Arbitrary Flow (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

RW: I suspect one possible reason your work does this is because it has the most incredible formal logic to it. Is it a sort of alternative visual language, or a biological process, a way to give a strict order to the personal chaos of expressionism?

DZ: It probably is a kind of alternative visual language.

RW: What got you interested in this method?

DZ: As I started to explain (above), I've always been attracted to certain kinds of imagery, the more complex and detailed, the better. There is so much of it now, covering a huge range from the microscopic to the gigantic. It's almost too much. So I suppose I'm looking for ways to tie it all together and, at the same time, for ways to shred it apart. I don't know if that makes any sense.

RW: I think it does.

Transfer Locus (2004, graphite on paper)

DZ: Take just one source, for example, probably my favorite: satellite imagery. These views encompass so much. They are dense with information, with overlapping and interacting systems of geology, biology, and human artifacts.

RW: I'm with you one hundred percent on this. I've spent hours on Google Maps in satellite view, following the routes of major rivers, examining geological formations, exploring distant part of the globe. It's mesmerizing, really.

Orbital Clusteration (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

DZ: Yeah, Google Earth is better than video games, and I had to give those up or I'd never have time to do anything. They have Google Ocean or something now. I haven't seen it yet, but I guess it lets you explore undersea topography.

Yet, in many ways, they only reveal a tiny fraction of what is there. They can only allude to what is underneath and to what lies outside the frame. There is a clarity and ambiguity at the same time. I think it is this dichotomy that attracts me--as well as the idea of scale: a satellite-mounted camera is nothing more than a big microscope looking at a pebble in space. Where do we fit into this continuum of scale, now that we have the ability to see so far in either direction?

RW: I'll take that to be a rhetorical question...

Linear Transversion (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

DZ: Actually, I was hoping you could answer that...

RW: [LOL] Ummm...

DZ: I sometimes feel a little like a drowning rat. There's so much interesting stuff to look at, it's hard to know what to grab onto. I will never be able to better illuminate the kind of imagery that's already out there, because it is already out there, in all of its full and detailed splendor. So I borrow the pieces that I find interesting and splice them together in ways that lead, hopefully, to somewhere unknown. The journey, itself, becomes the focus.

Synthesized Abatement (2008, graphite on paper)

RW: Using line, color, and composition, can an artist manipulate in some predictable way the paths the viewer's eye will travel around through a work of art?

DZ: Artists (and others) have been attempting to manipulate viewers' eyes for a long time now. I think there are certain tools and methods for doing this, although it's ultimately up to each viewer, and everyone brings their own sensibility and history to what they see.

Synthesized Abatement [detail]

RW: The reason I ask this is being aware of how I tend to visually absorb works of art. Some of your pieces almost look like you could take a traditionally representational painting, say, from the Renaissance, lay your work over top of it, and yours would map out a diagram of the painting's compositional elements and patterns of eye movement. But perhaps I'm just projecting, as you say, my own sensibility and history onto it.

DZ: I think that we have all been bombarded with so much imagery by the time we become adults--and there is probably a finite range of "devices" used to manipulate our navigation through the frame--so these patterns have become embedded in us. It's likely that, as I work, I'm channeling something I've stored away subconsciously.

For my own work, I suppose a goal is the keep the viewer's eyes traveling around the image, and when they come to an edge, having something that will cause them to circle around and come back into the frame. As with any image, that may represent a section of something larger. I am intrigued by what is outside the frame, and how one can infer that information using what is inside the frame.

Deregulated Engagement (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

RW: So there's a very deliberate tension between the self-referential quality of the objects in the frame and the fact that the patterns can extend outside of it, potentially to infinity.

Multiple Dispersion (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

DZ: I would agree with that, although it's a little different when I'm working on a floating piece (where an isolated form "floats" on the page, surrounded by blank space). While these often refer to multiple systems or objects (sometimes recognizable, sometimes not), I think of them almost as specimens, cut off from some broader context. It's kind of strange in that the viewer not only has to interpret what is there, but also has to infer or even invent a context for it. We are used to seeing maps and photographs that fill the frame, so we understand that whatever is at the edge continues beyond it. But yes, in all cases, infinity is good.

RW: You might find it interesting that one of the major film theorists (I'm fairly certain it was Siegfried Kracauer) extended this idea to narratives. Since film originates in photography, which, as you said, captures a small section of the real world that continues beyond the frame, he said the classical tragedy formula--where the main character dies at the end of the story--is inappropriate for film. Film narratives, he claimed, should be presented as short segments of a larger timeline that continues on after the film ends.

DZ: That makes sense, and he's probably right. But it assumes the narrative ends when the character dies. I would suppose that it would have to continue, whether we like it or not. There are lots of folks affected by the death, and let's not forget about all the worms and microbes for whom he/ she becomes lunch.

RW: Don't think the ancient Greeks ever covered that one...

Implemented Cohesion (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

A lot of your work seems to allude to the idea of humankind's false belief in its ability to master our environment. It's as if you're performing cosmetic surgery on both a microscopic, viral scale and a grand, geological scale at the same time. It's particularly poignant when, with an effortless wave of her hand, Mother Nature can lay waste to vast areas of Indonesia with a Tsunami or unleash a Swine Flu epidemic. Do you have unusually strong views about the relationship between humans and the planet we inhabit?

Seasonal Overlay (2007, graphite on paper)

DZ: This may be a kind of central question, and one that probably comes closest to the toughest question, which can be summed up: why do I do this? I do indeed have strong views about our relationship to the planet we inhabit, largely informed by what we can so easily see, now that we have the tools for looking. We are voracious as a species, and things are clearly out of balance, rapidly becoming more so.

There is a pair of satellite images in one of the books I have, Satellite Atlas of the World, that depicts deforestation in Brazil. The first is from 1984, the second from 2001. They show in striking clarity how humans have cleared away so much forest in such a short time, and this is happening all over the world. We are consuming the life on the planet.

I don't consider myself an "environmentalist" (though I am surely in that category), because that label completely misses the point. Semantics seem to matter here, because the environment is not something that is "out there." We are the environment, and the environment is us; how we treat it is simply how we treat ourselves. I'm not worried about the planet--it's just a rock--though I'm fairly concerned about the thin layer or skin on the surface of it and the atmosphere above, because it is us, and it is being transformed in ways that likely will not benefit us. That said, I'm just as guilty as any other modern, "civilized" person in my poor treatment of said skin...and thus, of myself.

We are indeed at the mercy of forces we cannot control. At the same time, we are, intentionally or not, changing the dynamics through our actions. Maybe it will all be for the best in the long run, but somehow I don't think it will be that great for humans. I think I remember a George Carlin bit where he said (to paraphrase), "people evolved on earth because the earth wanted plastic."

I'm on board with a great deal of what Carlin says. But I think it's somewhat dangerous encouraging people to dive off the endangered species bandwagon. So many of them are endangered directly as a result of humans' irresponsible behavior.

We are designed by nature to seek gratification. So I think it's just a flaw in nature that we are, at the moment, smart enough to be able to manipulate our surroundings but not smart enough, collectively, to be able to control ourselves, despite obvious evidence that we are on an unsustainable path.

Which brings me back to that nagging question: why do these drawings? I can't really answer the question. The work often feels like a futile, misdirected effort. In the face of such clear evidence of what is happening to our collective skin, and our collective ability to ignore this clear evidence, maybe I'm just looking for another way to see things.

Transitional Schematic (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

RW: Do human cities behave like gigantic organisms?

Quantified Separation (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

DZ: Human cities are gigantic organisms, with highways, train tracks, and shipping lanes as conduits or circulatory systems that bring nutrients in from the outside and some of the waste back out. They are connected to and a part of all the other organisms that inhabit our thin surface later. In some ways, they are extremely efficient and economical and yet can be seen as a symptom of imbalance. They cannot sustain themselves without constant input from outside resources. But there are lots of interesting things going on within them, so it could be that the balance might even out eventually. It's hard to know the ecological value of the culture that cities produce.

Sectional Regression (2007, ink and acrylic on paper)

RW: I suppose it's possible that our cities are enormous biological machines that devour resources and convert them into art, culture, different types of communication, and a whole lot of garbage.

DZ: Certainly, but machines can be controlled externally (at least, they are designed to be). Cities are colonies, composed of individuals, each of whom makes countless choices at any given moment. How can one even contemplate any kind of control over such mayhem? Even trying to nudge in a given direction becomes a monumental undertaking. And I think we agree that the waste products of these machines, or colonies, or whatever we call them, are becoming increasingly problematic. Our little world is a closed system, after all.

RW: Absolutely agreed.

So, in what direction do you see your work going in the next few years?

DZ: I have no idea where the work will go next. The thing that keeps me interested is not knowing. I have many ideas for new things to introduce to the mix, but they're too numerous to list, and I don't know which ones I'll actually use. I like the process of slow evolution in the drawings. The work kind of regenerates itself in ways that I can't predict. At the moment, I still get satisfaction from working this way, from the slow, methodical accumulation of marks on paper, but some day it may just drive me nuts.

RW: [LOL] Well, I certainly hope that doesn't happen any time soon!

DZ: I think I'll be okay for a while.

Thanks.

RW: Thanks to you, Dan, for a great conversation.

DZ: You're welcome. It was a pleasure.

Daniel Zeller is represented in New York by Pierogi and in Los Angeles by the Daniel Weinberg Gallery.

©2009, Ryan Witte

Culinary Delights

Going on right now at the Metropolitan Museum is a fantastic little show entitled Vermeer's Masterpiece: The Milkmaid. I highly recommend it. I was actually expecting a very stuffy, high-brow examination of this painting in historical context. Quite the contrary, this show is not only instructive, but intimate, personal, and downright funny. There are also somewhat complicated Feminist issues being alluded to by the discussion, but I'll let someone else travel down that bumpy road.

I had actually missed the retrospective of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) when it was going around the United States in the 1990s. If I remember correctly, I think it bypassed New York and the closest it got was the National Gallery in D.C. But that summer, a friend of mine and I were traveling all around Europe, and got to Amsterdam while the retrospective was in The Hague. We figured we were already close enough, and The Hague seemed an interesting side-trip, a bit off the beaten path. So we went for two days and a night so we could see the Vermeer. He didn't really do all that many paintings, I think it's something like thirty-five altogether, and I think the retrospective included pretty much all of them. It was quite wonderful. So I'd seen all these pieces and studied them somewhat closely before, but as I told another friend when the Met show opened, I don't think you can ever really see too much Dutch Renaissance.

Anyhow, a first section explains how milkmaids and kitchen workers in general had a reputation--or "were assigned" the reputation--for being ~ahem~ amorous. The similarity between a milkmaid milking a cow and...other activities...was not lost on these painters or viewers of the works. These paintings have enough subtly and not-so-subtly sexual imagery to make a 1970s advertising executive start foaming at the mouth.

Click that and look at her back, right above his left hand.

--Credit there in the image.

This is the earliest piece in the show.

Peter Wtewael, Kitchen Scene (1620s, oil on canvas)

Her putting the chicken on the spit is so blatantly obvious it's almost hard to believe this is a painting from the 1600s. It's practically obscene and totally hilarious. But then there's also his hand holding the jug, also quite suggestive of certain other...parts.

It's not all fun and games, however, here's one without as much suggestiveness:

Hendrick Sorgh, A Kitchen (ca. 1643, oil on wood)

Sorgh's piece is more just a reflection on the lives of these women, tending house for a wealthy middle-class family in the Netherlands. Text in the show also mentions how the middle-class grew to such prominence in the Netherlands during this time, and the lower-class house workers became a favored subject amongst painters, no doubt for its brutal realities. The woman at center does look off to the right, though. Evidently an older version of this work included a man entering with fish for sale, likely suggesting some erotic interlude. The posture and position of the woman on the left is remarkably similar to that of Vermeer's milkmaid.

Emanuel de Witte, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft (1650, oil on wood)

De Witte (1616-1690) is surely one of my ancestors, or at least, descended from one common to me. Since the name is relatively uncommon, I get excited about things like this. Very likely, he and I could both trace our lineage back to the Wittisheim or Witternheim communes in Alsace. I guess it's only fitting then that I adore this piece in so many ways. There's another, almost identical view of the Oude Kerk by Hendrick van Vliet, but I thought it'd be better to support the work of my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-uncle twice removed instead (that's thirteen "greats"). I wish I could find a more similar view, but here's the Oude Kerk in a lovely photograph by Theo Jacobs:

But click on de Witte's piece. First of all, it's a beautifully precise architectural rendering, which I love, of course. The quality of the light foretells the work of Vermeer and painters like him. And I just had to laugh. The boys at the left are tagging the column with graffiti. It'd be awesome to visit and examine that column very, very carefully to see if there are still remnants of graffiti on that spot. Even better, there's a dog peeing on the column on the right. Again, the realism is astounding, as is the painter's sense of irreverence for his sacred architectural subject.

Back to the sex, we have this one:

Gerrit Dou, The Kitchen Maid (ca. 1650, oil on wood)

This is the original. The piece at the Met is an engraving of it done about a century later. Dou's kitchen maid is incredibly lusty. Her surroundings are just chock full of all these objects that, to a viewer in 1650, would have been completely, blatantly sexual and suggestive of parts of the body where your bathing suit covers. The orifice of the jug she's pouring and the carrots are particularly obvious. I'm going to take a guess that the open lantern is an invitation for the viewer to light her passions aflame. The look on her face is about as come-hither as it gets.

Some of the objects on view in this show made it especially fantastic. They show pottery almost identical in style and age to the ones in Vermeer's painting. Not the one on display at the Met, but very similar is this Westerwald stoneware jug:

Westerwald Stoneware Jug (ca. 1650-1700)

--Photo courtesy H. Paul Garland.

The one in Vermeer's scene and the one on display have a pewter lid and slightly different design, but it's clear these were quite common at the time. The Met also shows a couple of earthenware kitchen vessels remarkably similar to the ones in the painting. In other words, when the exhibition is described as putting the painting into a context, they really mean in every possible way. It's such a delightful work of curatorship by Walter Liedtke from the department of European paintings.

Vermeer was quite a bit more subtle when it comes to l'amour than some of the other, more crass examples in the show, but one little detail was quite interesting. It's a ceramic tile in the lower right hand corner of the painting with the figure of cupid on it. It's very easy to miss if you're not looking closely. To illustrate all the better, the Met had next to the kitchen vessels an example of such a tile:

Delft tile depicting cupid (ca. 1650-1700, tin-glazed pottery)

--Photo courtesy Essential Vermeer.

Johannes Vermeer, A Maid Asleep (ca. 1657, oil on canvas)

Here Vermeer has already started to explore the subject of romance amongst household workers. The door left ajar and the position of the chair on the right indicates the recent departure of a gentleman caller. The maid is dreaming about the guy, of whom she's obviously quite fond. On her face is the remnant of a sort of peaceful smile.

Here it is, the painting touted as his "masterpiece":

Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1658, oil on canvas)

It really is a gorgeous painting. So much of Vermeer's work was masterful, however, I think I'd be hard-pressed to decide on a favorite. Nonetheless, it really is fantastic and the Met describes it as such because it was a transitional piece for Vermeer. The orifice of the milk jug has the same connotations here. The cupid tile is on the wall at bottom right, just next to that wooden box, which is a foot warmer. One might be tempted to wonder if these paintings weren't sort of like pin-ups. The only problem, really, is their intended audience. Presumably the consumer of such a piece would be an upper-middle class man with adulterous fantasies about the woman working in his kitchen. It leads to all kinds of creepy exploitative implications.

This is that guy's wife or potential girlfriend:

Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (ca. 1662, oil on canvas)

Here Vermeer switched from the servant of the house to the mistress of the house. This is an upper-middle class woman who the presumed owner of the painting would have courted. The map indicates worldliness. Here the pitcher isn't shown with its orifice on display, but rather concealed from view. Furthermore the bowl in which it sits is a symbol of purity. The faceted planes of the pitcher are rendered with these beautiful bands of reflected color. Those bands travel up her arm and are mirrored by the pleats in her collar, leading to her head, connecting her mindset directly to those symbols of purity. The headdress is the type of garment that would be worn during the morning toilette, alluding to a relatively intimate aspect of ordinary daily life. Another painting in the exhibition, A Young Woman at Her Toilet with a Maid (ca. 1651) by Gerard Ter Borch, who was a bit older but a contemporary of Vermeer's, describes a similar scene but with the tinge of vanity.

There are quite a few other interesting paintings in the show that really round out this examination. I've decided not to mention them, but they are definitely worth going to see. It's a very impressive little show.

©2009, Ryan Witte

We Will Rock U--Part Two

Next we jump ahead two decades to the 1950s. It was in 1954 that the institute was renamed The Rockefeller University, they created a graduate program, and began to expand. But first, CSBA added this extension to the Hospital in 1951, seen here at the top right with the mostly nondescript Gasser Hall in the right foreground:

Click for larger.

--All photos ©2009, Ryan Witte, except where otherwise noted.

Obviously, that's not a building from 1951, from the looks of it. It was renovated again in 2000 by HOK, the absolute masters of stadium and sports arena architecture whose roster of projects is so gargantuan I won't even bother to go into it here. They also added the fifth and sixth floors. Here's what it looked like when it was being constructed, quite sensitive in style to the original structure it was supplementing:

--Photo courtesy Shepley Bullfinch.

But when Harrison & Abramovitz came in toward the end of that decade, things really started to get interesting. This is also when Kiley redid the landscape design.

In 1958 Harrison & Abramovitz built Caspary Hall/ Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Hall and the President's House. Caspary and Abby Aldrich easily read as one single building, but it's divided in two on the interior with faculty offices in Caspary and a dining hall and other amenities in Abby Aldrich.

The southern end is Caspary. This is one of the many inviting outdoor spaces, nicely concealed from the main entrance roadway by dense foliage:

Then the southern end is Abby Aldrich:

I didn't go into the buildings too much, but this one I did, because it seemed to be the only way to get from the lower level to the upper level without walking all the way around the building. The interiors are gorgeous in that sparse mid-century sort of way. Here's a lounge area with Chuck Close's portrait of Philip Glass:

And on the opposite side of that wall, a portrait by Paul Peter Kiehart of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller herself:

I don't know if anyone actually lights those fireplaces in the winter, but I certainly hope they can and do. It would be such a beautiful place to hang out on a frosty winter night.

This section of the building had a number of interesting paintings, one that looked like Piet Mondrian but wasn't, one that looked like Clyfford Still but wasn't, and a few others that looked like they were but weren't. Outside is a sculpture that looked like and actually was by Herbert Ferber, Homage to Piranesi, I (1963):

The northern end of the building terminates in the most incredible sort of pavilion, one of those moments of discovery and an example of the team's goal to create a series of "outdoor rooms" throughout the campus:

You could smell barbecue all over this part of the campus, it was coming from here. The food looked unbelievably delicious, but I didn't think I should ask for a taste. This gets even better, too. Where that greenery is, just right of center, is actually a circular opening to the lower level with a tree growing up through it:

The campus is situated on a hill, like with Founder's Hall positioned majestically at the top of it as seen from York Avenue. Almost all the later buildings take amazing advantage of that slope to create these incredible views and meandering routes from one level to the next. It's as if they conceived of the inhabitable volumes and their interrelationships not just on the X and Y axes, but also fully on the Z.

Right outside that covered patio is this extremely charming fountain:

They have more grills you can see there, which I assume the students/ faculty can use to make burgers whenever they like. The public relations person pointed out that it's been called an "urban oasis," and she wasn't kidding. This place seems like paradise in the summertime. It's no wonder they can lure the world's greatest scientists to this place.

To the west of this pool is the Philosopher's Garden, with a terraced area with tables and chairs--remarkably full of people, by the way, so I didn't photograph it--and more fountains.

There were ducks everywhere, not surprisingly, just wandering around. In this pool was a mother with a bunch of ducklings trailing behind her. But in the distance there you can see arguably the most widely recognized building on the campus, the domed Caspary Auditorium.

There's another duck there, if you look closely. The dome may not look quite as familiar because it was originally covered in mosaic tiles--at least, that's how I remembered seeing it in photographs. Within eight months after it was completed, the original tiles had bit by bit started to come dislodged and pop off like projectiles, I was told. Some years ago, Abramovitz' firm covered it over with this Fullerish dome. I asked if there were plans to redo the mosaic, and I guess there aren't, which I think is kind of a shame, but I can understand that this is probably far more durable and it is, reportedly, self-cleaning, which is good considering bird poop and so on.

I love how the geometries work so beautifully with the sunlight and shadow.

The entrance and interior are totally sculptural in this wonderfully late-50s sort of way, too. You walk through a set of double doors (around the corner from the Chuck Close) into a staircase lobby not much larger than the doorway. The staircase corridor gets wider and wider as you step down toward a wall of glass and a set of glass doors that lead into the auditorium below. In other words, you enter it from above through that concrete bridge you see in those exterior shots. Along one side of the stairs are these terraced pits filled with stones that once contained plantings. The other side of the staircase was made into a ramp for ADA compliance. There was an event going on inside and a trio of snotty 20-something year olds--I guess working?--in the lobby, so I just took a quick look and left without getting photos of it. Here's what it looked like when it was first built:

--Photo courtesy Desde la memoria urbana.

The acoustics were by Bolt, Beranek & Newman, who I think I may have discussed before elsewhere. They also created the revolutionary live translation system at the United Nations and acoustic specifications for the ill-fated Philharmonic Hall before it was overhauled in the 1970s. I'll be the first to point out that what happened at Lincoln Center was not at all their fault, in fact Leo Beranek (who very kindly corresponded with me briefly by email) did everything he possibly could under insane circumstances, but that story is way too long to go into here. They were the ones to implement the ARPANET, what eventually became...this. They were the first to use the "@" symbol for email addresses and they created the first protocol router. They're now called BBN Technologies and are a fascinating company.

Unfortunately, I couldn't even get close to the President's House to so much as see it. In fact, the security guard at that entrance was being a bit of a butthole, to be honest. I swear, I think one of the job requirements for being a security guard is that you need to have self-esteem issues and become very easily intoxicated by small amounts of power. He needed to prove to me that his you-know-whats were WAY bigger than mine. Luckily I know how to appease these types. I puckered up and kissed his behind, and by the end of our exchange, he was all about shaking my hand oh, so politely and making nice.

On top of it all, finding any images anywhere of the President's House was like some kind of tragicomic Surrealist scavenger hunt. The person at the Rockefeller Archives was very nice, and they do have some from when the buildings were first built, but I wasn't going to make a trip to Sleepy Hollow or whatever (I've already been up there, trying to catch a glimpse of the Headless Horseman--we didn't), or pay all the fees to get them. For some great historical photos, check out Robert Stern's New York 1960. Rockefeller University PR were kind enough to let me show this image of when it was first built, from an old transparency:

Anyway, I did get some nice shots from the river promenade:

As for the interiors, these photos are the work of a very cordial and fantastic photographer by the name of Marie Kotschedoff (I always have to be careful when I try to spell that). I highly recommend checking out her work.

Here you can see the amazing interior landscaped courtyard, which responded perfectly to Kiley's landscaping of the campus in general, and very much reminds me of Philip Johnson's residential work from this same period:

And the dining room, which evidently could accommodate dinner parties for around fifty people or something insane:

Part Three forthcoming.

©2009, Ryan Witte