A Crisis, For Real

The latest reading in my journey on the road to Social Justice in Architecture and Design was Melvin L. Mitchell's The Crisis of the African-American Architect: Conflicting Cultures of Architecture and (Black) Power. This book was so abominably written I can't help but wonder how it ever got published in the first place. This is a topic I take extremely seriously, and it deserved better. I feel a responsibility to discuss it at some length.

The entire book is riddled with typos and spelling errors. The grammar is a complete nightmare. The formatting has absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. Phrases that are hyphenated, italicized, or capitalized are formatted in a different manner further along in the very same paragraph. Adjective after adjective after adjective is strung together without the hint of a comma anywhere in sight. There was one thing in particular that irked me above all else:

"the growing downtown employed students and graduates"
"today's architectural academy based high profile architects"
"the recently departed charismatic young assistant professor"
"an inner-city 'urban problems' oriented graduate city planning program"
"an independent and full dean headed School of Architecture"

I don't know if there's a name for what he's doing here, converting noun and verb phrases into adjective phrases? I asked my own brilliant proofreader, and she said if she'd call it anything, she'd call it "Bad English." These quotes are taken verbatim from a mere twenty consecutive pages. The full 350 pages of text would require the addition of thousands of commas and probably even more hyphens to correct the numerous appearances of this awkward, cumbersome grammar. It became so distracting after a while that I could barely concentrate on the content of the book.


Crisis is divided into three sections: "Architecture and Black America at Three Critical [sic] Twentieth Century [sic] Junctures," "Black Power, Urban Rebellion, Black Mayor, Black Architects in Washington, DC," and "Manifestos for the Next Generation."

In the first of the three sections (where the proofreader was still partially awake, apparently), Mitchell puts forth two propositions which I believe deserve examining. The first proposition goes something like this: Pablo Picasso's Cubism was inspired by a West African aesthetic + Le Corbusier was attempting to fuse the Cubist aesthetic into three-dimensional works of architecture + Le Corbusier gave birth to the International Style = International Style Modernism is fundamentally West African in origin. The final conclusion is delivered in a tone of decisive inclusion into the evolution of twentieth-century architecture, something People of Color sorely deserve. Unfortunately, this was not the way to do that.

While I understand the dubious process Mitchell went through to reach this conclusion, it's an extremely bold one to make. I think the responsibility to qualify a statement is proportional to the boldness of it, and this one has holes all through it. Truly, it raises more questions than it answers.

What exactly was the nature of the West African aesthetic encountered by Picasso in the early twentieth century, and by Le Corbusier either directly or through Picasso's proxy? To what degree were the artifacts Picasso encountered being acquired and displayed by Paris curators for the very sake of their apparent exoticism, and not necessarily as an accurate sampling of African culture? For crying out loud, the display of African artifacts in Paris was being accompanied by claims that cannibalism was being practiced there on a wholesale level--as in humans sitting around a campfire gnawing on human arms--and that's not the worst of it by far. Curating is hardly an objective enterprise.

Nude with Raised Arms (1907). Image courtesy Allpainters.

Undoubtedly this aesthetic did inspire Picasso, for almost a decade, but how much of his impressions was tarnished by a white, western-European delusion of superiority? We know both Picasso and Le Corbusier were egomaniacs on their very best day. Did he truly understand the aesthetic he thought he was encountering, or was it a superficial and/or contorted view of a culture foreign to him, clouded by his own preconceptions? Indeed, white European encounters with cultures on other continents at the time were designed a priori to highlight the differences of The Other.

Carel Fabritius, A View of Delft, With a Musical Instrument Seller's Stall (1652)

The way I understand Picasso's most significant breakthrough, it's more easily traced back to the Dutch Renaissance artists' use of various forms of perspective in different areas of the same canvas to more realistically approximate the impression of a scene as one's eye moves across a landscape. While the viewing subject of a Dutch painting still had a fixed position in space, the eye itself was considered to be in motion, at least in its socket. 

Much like the Italian Futurists, I think it's far more credible to propose that both Picasso and Le Corbusier were celebrating the high speeds offered by increasingly technologically-advanced forms of transportation (and the relatively sophisticated manufacturing that produced them). It was a world felt to be in motion, more often and faster than ever before. Picasso disconnected the viewing subject from its fixed position in space and set it in motion, free to travel around the objects in view. Does this eye, dislodged from a fixed spacial location, appear in traditional West African culture? If so, then in what format? Decorative art? Mythology? Literature? I'd be excited to learn how it does.

Shröder House (1924). Image courtesy Open Buildings.

This is not the first time I've heard it said that Le Corbusier was trying to find an architectural expression in the directions modern art was taking at the time. It would be absurd to suggest that his own experiments with painting weren't complementary to the evolution of his built work. Personally, I find the compatibility of Gerrit Rietveldt's architecture with the De Stijl painters far more immediate, if not obvious. The problem remains, though, that Le Corbusier as a painter was not a Cubist, he was a Purist. He and his friend Amedee Ozenfant actively rejected Cubism.

Image courtesy Megaestructuras.

If we bypass Picasso completely, then we can place Le Corbusier himself in Algeria in 1931. [And I'll have to say that his plans for Algiers were some of the most astonishingly futuristic works that I have ever seen outside of Buckminster Fuller. Like all great works of art, no reproduction could ever compare to seeing them in person.] Arguably his pinnacle work of Modernism, the Villa Savoye, was already two-years old. Picasso had drifted away from his African period nearly ten years prior. And Algeria isn't "West" Africa by any stretch of geography. 

Okay, then, in what way did Le Corbusier's experiences in Northern Africa influence his architectural work, and how did that manifest? How can we be certain Africa had a more profound influence on him than South America, for instance? More interestingly, might he not have been equally influenced by the cultures of indigenous people of South America, if he encountered them at all? Mitchell's assertion later in the book that the Chandigarh complex was inspired by African precedents is actually extremely insulting to the Punjabi and their rich culture, in as much as Le Corbusier's impressions of rural life in India were very likely a condescending, colonizing distillation of their reality. In what ways Le Corbusier was influenced by rural, northern-Indian culture and expressed it in his work in Chandigarh has been examined convincingly elsewhere. If the chapel at Ronchamp was derived from African forms, as Mitchell contends, why did it take as long as forty-five years for it to happen?

Whether or not Le Corbusier is the "founding father" of International Style Modernism is most probably a debate involving Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, which isn't really relevant here. I believe they both hold that title, myself. It might also be pertinent to note that European Modernism was never fully adopted in the United States on the scale of smaller (domestic) buildings except for some key examples from the mid-1930s to the early-1960s. It only came to flourish here extensively in the corporate sphere, where the forward-thinking attitudes it connoted had appeal for marketing and branding.


The second proposition Mitchell makes in this first section is to say that African-Americans are as involved in the evolution and current flavor of American architecture as they are American culture in general, and he points to American music, specifically. It would be idiotic to argue that African-Americans haven't made an indelible imprint on American music. In fact, I don't think it's too big a stretch to say that now, in 2013, you'd be very hard-pressed to find any musical genre currently existing that hasn't been strongly influenced by the sounds of people of African descent at the very least, or fully has its origins in African-American musical genres, at best. The United Kingdom ought to say the same.

An analogy between music and architecture, however, is extremely problematic in a capitalist, industrialized society. For one thing, the production of Music, as an art form, is essentially free. It's one of the only art forms that truly is, aside from Dance, arguably. Singing is entirely free, minus professional training. Basic percussion may as well be. I don't need to do an internet search to be fairly certain I could purchase an old, beat-up, but perfectly functional guitar for as little as twenty-five dollars. I'm not convinced that one even needed to possess his or her own radio in this country to be well acquainted with music derived from African-American styles, whether interested or disinterested in hearing them.

Architecture is a whole other arena altogether. Mitchell later goes into more detail on, simply put, how very expensive building is. One useful line of research might be to compare American architecture from before 1700 with similar building types from after around 1760 (the period during which the largest number of Africans were brought to North America), to see if any stylistic traits or construction idiosyncrasies appear that could be reliably traced back to concurrent building practices in West Africa. 

In addition to the tragically limited examples of structures we have designed, built, and used solely by African-American people, one might also approach this question by looking at types of structures which we do have in larger supply:
1. Structures not designed in a technical sense by any architect, but built by African-American craftspeople for their own use;
2. Structures designed by white architects, but built by African-Americans for their own use;
3. Or for the use of other African-Americans; and for sake of comparison,
4. Designed by African-American architects, but built by predominantly white craftspeople for use by people of whatever ethnicity (likely rare, and unfortunately confused in this discussion by the fact that people in building trades now tend to be working-class rather than artisans); and finally, the area where there is potentially the most data of all (and it has been explored to some extent),
5. Examining the distinctive ways (if any) that African-Americans appropriate and utilize their spaces, regardless of who designed, built, or legally owned/owns those structures.

These five areas of African-American involvement in the built environment--and any more combinations one might like to add--could be extremely fruitful in a search for ways in which African-American culture is already a part of America's architectural character, and might offer some concrete qualifications for saying so. Suggesting that the saturation of American music is in any way equivalent to the style of our architecture is preposterous. For the first half of the last century, and likely beyond, I think it's safe to say that ninety-nine percent of the (white) architects entrusted with the creation of our built environment had never once been in a predominantly Black neighborhood (for long), much less ever set foot in a Black family's home, or spent any illuminating time in either. A truly Black Voice in American architecture, with a few exceptions, has been systematically silenced. I maintain that it was not possible to silence that voice in American music as completely, for various reasons.


The second section of Crisis is meant to be a history of the African-American architectural scene from its origins to the present day (at the time of publication, 2003). Mitchell's argument is indisputably compelling, that its nexus was Washington, DC. He cites two main contributing factors, first, that from the turn of the twentieth century to around the mid-1930s, the leading architectural education at a Historically Black University shifted from Tuskegee University in Alabama to Howard University in DC. Second, that the vast majority of work being granted to African-American architects and firms was not in the private sector, but public works, generated in Washington for obvious reasons, and in even greater numbers with an African-American mayor, Marion Barry.

Aside from the fact that this was where the proofreader started falling asleep on the job (my quotes above are all from this section), the main problem here is that Mitchell couldn't seem to figure out whether he was trying to map out that history or write his own autobiography. The problems of rhetorical focus, style, and the changing voice of the author are disorienting enough. Much of Mitchell's account of how this ostensibly objective history unfolded was shaped by his own experience, right smack in the middle of it.

Had his account been posited from the start as an autobiographical, and therefore purely subjective telling of how it all went down, I'd have had no issues whatsoever. It wasn't. Very possibly he and his associates in and around Washington were at the forefront of a movement in Black Architecture. But what might a Black architect based in Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, or Detroit during this period have to say about that? Would s/he agree that all eyes were aimed at DC? Or were there other worlds, other histories, no less significant, being played out all over the country? According to Mitchell, the history he saw in his immediate vicinity, the one of which he was an active part, was seemingly the only one that mattered.

The statistics showing that DC had a far, far larger proportion of African-American practices at mid-century than any other city would support choosing the capital as that nexus, and I certainly have no reason to believe they're inaccurate. On the one hand, they make DC the obvious source of long and rich history on the subject. On the other hand, one might argue that because DC's African-American architectural scene was so very disproportionately large compared to anywhere else, that it is--for that very reason--the precise opposite environment one would want to choose to examine why Architecture holds such apparently (and sadly) little relevance whatsoever for young People of Color in the rest of the country.


The subject of the final section is self-evident from its title, "Manifestos for the Next Generation." Here is where everything completely falls apart. No proofreader ever saw it, clearly. There is quite literally another spelling or grammatical error in practically every single paragraph. There were a couple of instances where it was so bad, I honestly had no idea what the sentence was even supposed to mean. After a few pages that would seem to suggest that we're now discussing the future of African-American architects in general, Mitchell slides right back into an autobiographical account of the history of Black architects in Baltimore, Maryland, directly adjacent to Washington, DC. It sort of crept up on me, but after a number of pages of this, I began thinking, "wait...why are we back here again?" It was simply exasperating.

To be fair, he does make one astute observation in this section. It's this: the lucrative practice of architecture depends on a whole particular network of institutions that are directly targeted by systemic racism in this country. This institutional network includes the (in)accessibility of higher education, the acquisition and distribution of wealth and capital, control of real estate and what will be built on it and by whom, and the fact that architects typically don't see a substantial return on their investment in their higher education for the first twenty-five years or so of their careers. The exploitation of recently-graduated interns in the industry (which has been criticized elsewhere) is a blight on it that needs to be seriously re-examined, in my opinion. Many young People of Color don't have the privilege of wealth or social connections to go into a field like this one, with so many systemic barriers to their financial success in it. Personal or artistic fulfillment, as Mitchell duly notes, is not adequate or realistic compensation for young people attempting to break free of economic burdens that may face them.

Though not discussed in Crisis, I believe another problem lies in the ways wealth and material success are architecturally symbolized and displayed in this country. Up until quite recently, pretty much everyone who had--who could have--amassed any sizable wealth had been white people. Therefore, obviously, the architectural symbols of success of that kind would automatically be symbols of white wealth. It's typically American Colonial or Neo-Classicist in style, rural--or a suburban simulation of the rural--and seldom urban, aside from conspicuous exceptions like Park Avenue, Lakeshore Drive, or Beacon Hill.

It might be pertinent here to question to what degree the spaces we occupy are chosen by us, and to what degree they are assigned to us. This distinction is as much based in issues of class as it is race. It's also a bit more complex now that segregation is no longer sanctioned by law, but it's no less real. An upwardly-mobile, young white couple has the privilege of moving into a lower-income, working-class neighborhood, buying a dilapidated row house, and spending half a million dollars to restore it. There's little stigma attached to that, other than from native residents who might resent the signaled onset of unwanted gentrification of their territory. Quite the contrary, that couple's choice might even come off as "edgy" or "hip" to their pretentious, white, artsy friends.

For the young Black couple in a similar economic position, I suspect that option would not be so simple. For them, upward movement is not only about moving up, but also moving out, even if they had never before lived in the "hood." In other words, "you've got money, you're successful, why are you still living here?" If the superficial montages on a show like MTV Cribs are representative in any way (and I would not be at all surprised if they weren't, for various reasons related to media sensationalism), Black folks who do attain a high level of financial success seem to gravitate more toward a classically "white" symbolic representation of wealth than even their white counterparts do. I say that with the same disdain I reserve for all manner of hackneyed McMansion Suburban Sprawl, regardless of who it is perpetuating it.

My perusal of some of that show's episodes was admittedly brief (I find it nearly insufferable to watch). It appeared to me that, very ironically, the artists whose careers are built most on being the "Blackest"--on "keepin' it real"--seem most drawn to the traditionally "white" symbols of wealth, with a few exceptions. If I may risk this potentially offensive observation, they seem to choose to own and be master/mistress of what looks to me like The Big House, in architectural terms. Classical Greek columns and decorative details ostentatiously adorn every exterior and interior, dormer windows everywhere you look, double front doors with the requisite fake leaded glass in oval apertures, a plethora of rooms no one will ever use, and always on that perfectly-manicured suburban lane. Furnishings range from all types of Colonial and Victorian to Harvard Club and the boss's corner office: seats (pun intended) of power historically reserved for white males. Those symbols have been appropriated for their perceived power for obvious reasons...but at what cost?

Does the appropriation of historically white symbols of wealth and power in architecture and design--satisfying though it may be in the short-term--not merely perpetuate the notion that those institutions of white privilege were justified and legitimate from the start (which they absolutely were NOT)? One might ask these millionaires, "If you were to hire a Black architect to design a house celebrating your own personal background, with a layout that fits your unique lifestyle as an individual, built in a relatively non-white neighborhood, would that public presentation of your success be any less worthy of admiration? Or does such a gesture need to measure up to the standards white people have placed, without your consent or input, on the requirements of how to 'properly' represent material success architecturally?"

Fasil Ghebbi (1635), Ethiopia. Image courtesy Selline Maailm.

If it were me, as a semiotician and architectural historian, I'd look at the ways that the African Kings (and Queens?) expressed their majesty in the precolonial royal palaces of Western and Central Africa, but then examine how those forms relate or conform to (or might transform the concept of) a twenty-first-century, upper-middle-class American home. I'd love to find both parallels and inspirations for a new architectural idiom here. Whatever directions African-Americans decide to take their own architecture is something they'll decide for themselves. My white voice is irrelevant to that discussion.

Image courtesy Wiki Arquitectura.

The remainder of Crisis is a jumbled mess of ideas merely repeated from earlier in the book. There are musings on the role of information technologies, the internet, and computer-generated design software. That might have deserved some lip service in 2003, despite his repeated references to Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, which had already decisively pointed us in that direction. Now it's pretty much old news. He stands on this ground to recommend alternative, outside-the-box means of conceiving design and producing architecture, to thwart the system as it's been historically established. It's a potentially emancipating line of thought, but he leaves those ideas undeveloped by any real examples of what might be accomplished or how.

One might have thought that a timeline of "Critical Black Milestones" would be difficult to screw up, but no, it wasn't. From past tense to present tense, from present tense to past tense, Mitchell bounces back and forth till I had no idea when I was. He couldn't even figure out what decade he was talking about. In a section dedicated to the period post-1956, he starts talking about things that happened in 1932 and the 1940s. And a bibliography is easy enough to put together, right? Wrong. At one point I was trying to locate the exact title of a book by the brilliant bell hooks that was referenced in the text, and found the bibliography to be as convoluted and confusing as everything else.

By means of an extended book review, I have tried my best to do justice to these incredibly important issues. Melvin Mitchell's call for practicing African-American architects (or historians or theoreticians for that matter) to conceptualize and write about this subject more and more is absolutely justified. I do hope someone far better qualified than myself takes up this topic and discusses it in a depth and with the attention to precision that it deserves.

©2013, Ryan Witte

Solidarity

When I first started this blog, I expected to concentrate on the architecture of my city, New York. And I have diverged from that plan on some occasions. But I guess I wouldn't have expected that anyone aside from other New Yorkers would be interested in what I had to say, or at the most, it would be people from the northeast of the United States.

Instead I've learned that many of you reading these posts are from all over the planet. The UK, Russia, India, Indonesia, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Australia. You've all come to see what I had to say for one reason or another. I can't tell you how flattered I am by that. I just wanted to say how honored I feel to be a part of this world community of people like you who care about art and architecture, design and beauty. Thank you, my brothers and sisters. I hope you've enjoyed what I've written. Thanks to our technology, we are a family, and I hope our family continues to grow. Together, we can make our planet a more beautiful place to live, if we choose to do it.

Sincerely,
Ryan

Double Features

It seems like every other week, I'm yet again unable to resist the urge to discuss something that treads on the boundaries of what this blog was supposed to be about. The irresistible temptation up until now has been the Performing Arts, until such time as I see what futuristic insanity Rei Kawakubo's mind has birthed lately. Film, most particularly, is about as over-saturated by uneducated opinions as you can get, mostly because pretty much everyone sees them and proclaims to know what they don't like. But this post I think is far enough out in left field (or perhaps I should say the left side of the Cricket pitch) that I'm just going to go ahead and do it. And I do have a degree in Film Production, after all, so I suppose I should be allowed.

I've been trying to see a lot of Bollywood movies lately.

Asoka (2002), Satosh Sivan Cinematographer

It always baffled me how films from India, an industry that produces more films than even Los Angeles, are practically impossible to see here with any normal kind of consistency. Until the advent of Netflix, that is, bless that cult, but I really meant in the theaters. Certainly it takes getting used to some of the cultural differences. More than the way characters behave--I'd have to be an idiot (at best) to claim that causes me any consternation--I mean the way that physical action, visual signals, and character behaviors affect cinematic meaning. At the same time, these films are positively normal by the standards of a typical American audience compared to the alien things Fellini was doing mid-career, let alone the work of someone like Alejandro Jodorowsky.

And they love those musical numbers. But you'd be hard-pressed to find any American over thirty who hasn't seen at least one movie musical in his or her lifetime, especially if you include Disney. For everyone under forty, I fail to see all that much difference with sitting around watching MTV for a couple hours.

This intimate relationship between popular music and film is a bit troublesome. It means that Pop music is restricted to being compatible with a film context, which is dangerous, especially in clubs. The most innovative club music hasn't been narrative for about twenty years, except for the preferences of silly drunken sorority girls, who are not widely known for their progressive taste in music. It does, though, raise the standards quite considerably for film soundtracks to be club-worthy, an obligation not understood here since probably Footloose, and not fully realized since Grease, or questionably Xanadu. Much of it here is  radio-ready, and put to great use, but it's usually in the Ballad category.

We have the stars of course. John Williams is a brilliant master. Ennio Morricone is an absolute genius. Jerry Goldsmith and Nino Rota generated revolutions.  Giorgio Moroder did it all. But none of them could hold a candle today to Wolfgang Gartner, Saeed Younan, or even Danny Tenaglia on a dance floor (to choose three of my favorites out of many choices).

Well, I think I have a theory. Perhaps if an Indian reader feels I'm getting it all wrong, they'd be generous enough to discuss it. It's actually a combination of different elements creating a problematic result. The language barrier is one part of it, and I'd like to argue than it's actually more of one than it might be with a Romance language, and also that it's more of a problem than, say, Japanese, when combined with other factors.

I get the impression that India's audiences weren't raised as much on the zero-attention-span television media that we did, necessitating the rapid-fire audio-visual bombardment we get with most of our films now. On the other hand, I also get the impression that living in a city like Mumbai is like that, in reality, all the time. So many people, so many vehicles, so many smells, so many colors, so much bustle, so much activity. One might think their cinema would be ponderously slow just to offer a retreat, but they move fast. It's not quite an Oliver Stone pace (and he comes back into the discussion later), but the plot points hit hard and fast.

This is where the language becomes a problem. The pace is fast, and it's a narrative bombardment, as well as cultural. In other words, take for an example the first act of Terminator 3--which, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest feats of destructive, pyrotechnic, computer-generated action ever put on film. Sci-Fi nerds may compare it to T2 as disparagingly as you wish. Its physical action is overwhelming, but in only a very visceral way. There's not much you have to absorb intellectually, and for the most part, it relies very little on language, much like the popularity enjoyed by some of the Asian offerings, both Gojira and Kung-Fu (the preponderance of dubbing notwithstanding). It's interesting also to note that the pacing of, say, Yasujirô Ozu is extremely leisurely.

It's pretty much understood that Americans love movies because they can't be bothered to ever pick up a book. Subtitles are always going to be a hindrance because no one here wants to read. I'm not quite as cynical as that makes me sound, but you know what I'm saying. To be as fair as I'll care to be, it has to do with the reasons why people go to the movies in the first place, namely for escape.

There's something else here, as well, that I'd like to coin a term to describe if no one already has: Hindglish. My eyes know very well how to handle normal subtitles. In a Chinese film, where I understand none of the spoken dialogue but can focus more on raw intonation, subtitles are a breeze. But I have found it a bit distracting that much of the dialogue in Indian film is quite familiar (English) and much of it so foreign to me (Hindi), but all contained in a single sentence, bouncing back and forth.

The sum of all this--cultural differences, the fast narrative pacing, and the disorientation caused by the dialogue/subtitle dilemma--is that it is a lot of information to absorb. That brings me to the next factor: these movies are LONG. Make no mistake, I have many, many times sat through the entirety of Lord of the Rings installments. I become engrossed. I don't need to pause the DVD fifty times. A friend from India explained that mass audiences there (he very amusingly called them "the mob") wouldn't pay to see a movie if it weren't three hours long, that they'd feel cheated paying the same price for a movie of shorter duration.

I said most Americans can't sit still for much more than an hour at a time, especially without checking their Blackberries a couple of times. I also pointed out the size of an extra-large soda at our neighborhood cineplex. I almost puked just looking at this mammoth plastic vessel. I swear the extra-large is literally a half-gallon of soda. If I drank that much Coke in an hour and a half, quite seriously I'd need to be taken to the hospital. So no way is anyone going to be able to last three hours without going to the toilet. He did point out that they have rather long intermissions, gratefully.

I really lament the fact that our longer films these days don't have intermissions. It seemed like such a civilized inclusion to the experience. I understand that theaters want to pack as many showings into their business day as they possibly can. I also can't help but wonder if the loss of that percentage of ticket sales per day wouldn't be offset by the inevitability of some audience members purchasing another $11.99 barrel of popcorn or $7.95 slab of milk chocolate on their way to or from the restroom.

I'm also not surprised that the Bollywood Dramas are as long as they are. Speaking of Oliver Stone, I was recently inspired by the similarly intense and brilliant Rajneeti to watch JFK again, a movie I proudly own. Stone's movie is rapid-fire with not only narrative information, but also complex historical references, and it's a relatively long film. But I'm really not surprised by a lengthy Drama anymore. What got me was that the Bollywood Comedies are just as long.

I really thought about it, and in the entire history of American cinema, I could think of only one true Comedy that far surpassed the two-hour mark, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And for the record, I also believe that is the single most epic Comedy in the history of American film. I say that not because it is so very good or so very funny (or lengthy). There have been plenty of movies that were funnier (although it is soil-yourself hilarious). I say that because on the one hand, its plot is so ingeniously, uniquely simplistic that the greatest comedic insanity could effortlessly be attached to it. On the other, it symbolized a complete 180-degree shift in the nature of comedy as a genre and a vocation, from the old Vaudevillian Guard of both live theater and the Golden Age of Hollywood to the figures who would make their names and whose work would be shaped by the brand new medium of television.

I'm going to see more of these works and perhaps my impressions will change. I've found them entirely entertaining. I think it may be that it's too much for typical American audiences to handle, in intensity and duration. In New York, maybe we have a chance. We've always loved foreign films here. Our city is intense, its pace speedy compared to Los Angeles, the suburb-without-an-urb that has molded our continent's understanding of cinematic expression in its own image. Still, we have no city here that runs at the pace of Mexico City, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or I suspect Mumbai. I'm just happy I live relatively close to Jackson Heights so I might have a chance to enjoy them.

©2010, Ryan Witte

Body and Soul

I was introduced to the work of Heidi Taillefer at a fantastic gallery in Montreal last year, and decided to have a conversation with her.  The interview is a little longer than I'd anticipated, but she just had such interesting things to say.  Here's my interview with her, for your enjoyment.

--Silence is Golden (2005), oil on canvas

Ryan Witte: Your paintings are in some ways quite precise.  Would you say your studio--your working environment--is also precise, immaculate, and well-organized, or do you get messy while you work?

Heidi Taillefer: I get messy, the place gets messy, it's all fertile chaos.  Then after each painting is done, sometimes after a month or more...I clean up and start all over again.  It's quite refreshing to strip all the confusion and dirty rags and paint particles away to start fresh.  It invigorates and adds momentum to the beginning stages of a work, which I find quite a challenge.  It's like breaking out of an egg, I suppose.  The rest is easier.

RW: That's as long as it takes you to complete one?  Not all that much more than a month? You must work extremely long hours!

HT: I don't get as much painting done as you'd think!

RW: You're said to come from a very creative family.  Are your parents artists, also?

HT: My mother is an artist with a great sense of humor, and my father is very musical with a logical business side.  But he was a huge mischief-maker and is entertained by shenanigans still, so I would consider that to be creative (or playful), as well.  

--Amphibious (1993), watercolor on paper

RW: What do they think of your work?

HT: I had a lot of freedom to create and if I didn't, I just did it anyway--the result of my father's influence.  I had great parents; lots of love with enough strictness to become functional, and freedom/ independence to strike out and make it happen with a touch of chaos to stir the pot and generate a flurry of imaginative ideas.

--The Argument (1993), watercolor on paper

RW: It seems the Terminator films had a big effect on you.  They're great.  What did you think of this most recent one, Rise of the Machines?

HT: I actually haven't seen that one, yet.  I stopped focusing on the Sci-Fi films after my adolescence and focused on Classical myths, which were woven into the vocabulary of Sci-Fi imagery I'd established for myself already.  That is now tied in with current trends in examining technology in art, which I try to marry with our fundamental human nature--which is totally separate from Technology (primordial, universal, what the ancient cultures and religions explored).

RW: Don't you suppose our technology is threatening to become so sophisticated (with Artificial Intelligence, the drastic prolonging of life expectancy, and so on) that it could begin raising very fundamental questions about human nature?

HT: Yes, but I don't see how longevity interferes with human nature.  Maybe Artificial Intelligence, for sure.  But there's no going back without a cataclysm, so the only choice is to run forward with it and get mature and wise people into the fray to offset the inevitable tide of craziness that will come with the foolish and corrupt--living longer and being more intelligent, too.

RW: Oh, completely.  The way I tend to understand them, anyway, pretty much all of our spiritual philosophies throughout human history stem from either questions of mortality and death, or reproduction and social relationships--all of which would be drastically affected if we lived to be 800 instead of 80.

HT: I think our spiritual philosophies transcend death altogether and deal with love, trust, the ego, morality for sure--but the nature of events--as being more neutral, and there being a need for synthesis and unity.  Time adds a constraint in that there are only so many experiences we can have to deal with this, but just as Greek gods faced the same human foibles, yet remained immortal, so would we go through the same dramas--just drawn out over longer periods of time.  Maybe in the past longevity didn't exist as a possibility, so it was never sewn into the myths and philosophical representations...but they were, actually: the bible speaks of Moses being 800 years old, I think...something like that.  Sloppy as it sounds, Time and Philosophy are not mutually exclusive, other than philosophizing on the limits of time.

RW: Yes, I understand what you're saying, especially about mythological figures.  Perhaps you're right.

So right after the Lindberg baby was kidnapped, Salvador Dali's wife, Gala, showed up at a party with a doll that looked like the bloody corpse of the baby on her hat, and everybody completely freaked out.  I love that story.  Do you think your personal style in dress and demeanor reflects who you are as a painter?

HT: Not at all.  I may have my own style at times, but I live out my expression through lifestyle and art production.  At first glance, you'd never think I was an artist...which I kind of like.  I don't need another avenue of expression; it's automatically inherent, even if I try to go the conventional route.  But if I told you my life story you would think I was different, for sure.

RW: I wasn't aware that you'd designed the theme for a production of Cirque du Soleil until I looked around for more information about your work.  I absolutely loved the one I saw, though.  Had you seen any of their shows before you were approached to collaborate with them?

HT: I had seen a couple shows a few years back, but when I was told who the poster contract was for, I had no idea how big they were at the time, believe it or not.  Mind you, they were still at a more intermediate stage then, ten years ago.  It was an ad agency that approached me.

RW: What was your impression of what they do?

HT: I had found their shows inspiring in the stimulus I received, visually and musically.  But I'd say, by now, there needs to be much more edge to the shows.  I'm quite familiar with them and they need to be weirded-up more, made much more surreal, although the acrobatics are incredible (I would accept to help direct a show!).

RW: I hope they ask you!  I kind of agree, from what I've seen, that their surrealism could be made a more cohesive element in the way the show flows.  The comedian Kathy Griffin, on the other hand, has a whole hilarious bit about how she loved the contortionists, but she doesn't need to see a clown very slowly rolling a beach ball across the stage and going "AYE AYE AYE."  So I guess some people don't quite get their quirkiness.

--Venus Envy (1999), oil on canvas

So much of what I read about your work zeroes right in on your meshing of animate and inanimate forms.  I love that duality--I probably wouldn't mind being a cyborg someday.  But to me, that seems to completely miss the point, or at the very least, is a relatively superficial take on your style.  One thing I'm struck by, for instance, is the incredible way you play with the idea of Gender.  Do you consider yourself to be a Feminist?

HT: I love men too much to be a Feminist!  I admire and respect their greater sense of equanimity when dealing with things, although that's a generalization, since it's just a reflection of the influences from women I saw from my past.  Women need to become more like men, be more radical and less emotional and dependent on having a man.  But not to trump men, just to draw from their strengths.  And men could do the same with women and their strengths (which includes sensitivity and greater observation--it's very useful, especially in business, for example--the founder of the Cirque du Soleil operates very much on intuition, a feminine quality, and it has helped him dramatically).

I definitely don't like double standards, because they nullify too much of what women could offer and trivialize their abilities, as if they were useless.  But men and women are different, for sure.  It's just that women's attributes and qualities need to be recognized and not overpowered by men, who only validate nuts-and-bolts facts, whereas women are almost more esoteric, somehow.  It's the intuition: a product of motherhood and the need to read between the lines and understand beyond language.

--The Ventriloquist (2007), oil on canvas

Women need to emulate the strength men possess, while remaining true to their femininity, which is quite powerful in itself.  But men need to stop trying to domineer women.  It makes them seem threatened or something.  That's one way I may be a Feminist--I have trouble being domineered, unless I respect and accept the man's superiority as an individual, but it has nothing to do with gender.  If I am respected and appreciated, I will gladly cooperate and follow.  

I also think women tend to be much stronger and courageous, emotionally.  So combine it with men's greater inclination toward logic and imagine the synthesis!  I think the bottom line is that women need to be given the chance to meet challenges from a young age and not overprotected as they are just because they're "cute little girls."

--I Put a Spell on You (2006), oil on canvas

RW: What might your thoughts be on our current ability to surgically reassign a person's sex?

HT: Well, I think it's an individual's decision, which is their business and impacts them the most--but often families reject transgender relatives, from what I understand.  In the animal kingdom, it would appear that bisexuality is quite normal in nature and beneficial in sustaining peace and harmony among groups.  But a transsexual person is flirting with the notion of bodily mutilation of some kind, and I think there is a primal aversion to that; the same way people don't like cosmetic surgery, and Judaism doesn't like tattoos, etc.  

I don't know enough about Psychology, but if a person is truly unhappy as a man or a woman and wants to change, I wouldn't have a problem with it, unless it meant losing a man I was in love with or my dad, then I might be affected.  But for sure it is unsettling to think of so much toying with nature, although I think cloning is fascinating.  It's a matter of stretching the envelope and getting used to different ideas.  I'm sure most of the advances in medicine and nutrition and the like would have shocked and offended people a few hundred years ago.  So there is a continual evolution in public perception which lags behind the initial technological advances.

--Frustration Attraction (2006), oil on canvas

RW: Would you say there's a discord between the bodily mechanics of our sexuality and the emotions that accompany them?

HT: Let me see how to answer this...in Western culture today, yes.  It seems fashionable to become sexual immediately or soon after meeting someone new, regardless of the chemistry.  I do believe there can be an immediate chemistry which draws people together in some instances, but there seems to be this exaggerated expectation of sexual intimacy as a social norm soon after meeting someone, regardless of the more delicate aspects of interpersonal connections.  When sex for its own sake becomes a general norm, it amounts to such shallow and superficial encounters with little meaning--which turn into lonliness--and many people aren't even aware of why that is.

However, I have to say, after being to Brazil, which is a country of seething sensuality and bodily comfort, things feel a little different, and that sexual veneer is quite liberating.  The same holds true of French culture, but I think the difference may also lie in the fact that they incorporate an appreciation of pleasure of all things into life: food, music, arts, business, and physicality.  But after a while, you can't get past the limitations of sexual mechanics, and I think the family values upheld in (at least Brazilian) culture helps bridge the sterility of pure sexual mechanics.

--Sneaky Work at the Crossroads (2006), oil on canvas

However, the Vedic religions (Hinduism, etc.) originally understood the fundamental connection that does exist between bodily "sexual mechanics" and emotion, as explored through Tantric practices, which encouraged a devotion to the entirety of the other person, body and soul.  There, the body is the tool, or vehicle, or "machine," through which the essence of two (or more) people can merge, express their truest vulnerabilities through the act of intimacy and trust in the safety and care the other is offering--via the respect and devotion of each person's divine essence...and body.  Pretty nice, eh?

RW: Sounds very intense.

HT: It is why it has such a healing influence on so many ills suffered by an individual.  So there is definitely a synthesis to be had between the two, it's the philosophical perspective that makes the key difference.

--Silverfish (2005), oil on canvas

RW: Do you have any pets?

HT: I had pets growing up: cats, a dog, a snake, piranha, budgies, raised guppies, hamsters, salamanders, ants, etc...and now I'm thinking of getting a cat.

RW: Holy cow!  It's no wonder your work is so full of animal imagery.  Did you often draw or paint your pets?

HT: Not back then.

--Nothing and Yet... (2006), oil on canvas

RW: Are you a vegetarian or vegan?

HT: I became a vegan in my early-20s, for ethical reasons.  Then it became easier to include fish and seafood, and occasionally dairy and eggs.

RW: Why are you a vegetarian?

HT: It's only because of the factory farm industry and its hugely destructive environmental impact--and morally, it's way too cruel--the ultimate slavery.

RW: Oh, yeah.  One thing that really hit me hard was how unbelievably destructive the farming of shrimp is.  You've probably seen this before, but they basically dredge anything and everything up off the ocean floor, tearing out everything that gets in their path for miles at a stretch.  The shrimp amount to like 5% of what they bring up, the other creatures die, and then they just dump the rest back into the ocean as waste.  It's horrible.  Do you think you'd be less inclined to feel the way you do about your diet if we lived 1000 years ago and collected all our own food?

HT: The reason I became a vegan/ vegetarian was because of the cruelty, then the environmental damage, which is hard to avoid anywhere now.

--The Muse (2006), oil on canvas

RW: Are the human subjects in your pieces friends of yours?

HT: They are usually friends, and I take photos from which I then paint.

RW: Lucky for them.  I'll be sure to send you a photo of myself so I can be in one of your upcoming paintings.

--Govinda and the Heifer Nymph (2007), oil on canvas

There are also deeply spiritual implications in your work.  Do you believe that icons, particularly those represented by the visual arts, become somehow more "alive" as a result of being worshipped, fetishized?

HT: Any image gets a certain life of its own once it's worshipped, just as celebrity confers an almost divine quality onto a person.  They seem set apart from "regular" people and are expected to be above all the noisy and clumsy happenings of everyday life.  Symbols are powerful things.  They can galvanize forces such as armies, or populations, groups, etc., and that power is a mechanism which seems alive unto itself.  Once they are a target of focus, they channel our own inner power and may seem life-like--just like the Orishas of Candomblé or African fetishes.

--Chimeric (2005), oil on canvas

RW: Did the creatures in your pieces come into existence in the form we see them, or did some outside force combine, alter, genetically mutate, change their physical composition?  Is this state painful or awkward for them--like an animal with only three legs--or does it feel perfectly natural for them?

HT: Well, their altered form is meant to be felt as would a real being's altered form.  So missing a leg might represent hobbling of some kind, depending on what animal is "represented" at the time.  A goat with a broken leg might signal diminished potency, as the goat is also a symbol of sexuality.  Although sexuality symbolizing potency does not mean potency is of a sexual nature, exclusively.  It could be potency as energy, etc.  But if the leg is jagged, yes, then it hurts the animal.  If it's just a string of bells instead of a leg, it's just an anomaly, inconvenient as it may be.

RW: Do you suppose it's painful having some of their parts be machinery, or is it more like having a fake hip or an artificial heart: painful at first, but then the body adapts?

HT: I think only the surgery would hurt without an anesthetic!  And maybe scarring, after, for a while.

RW: Certainly I could interpret and interpret until my brain explodes, but viewers of artworks can often get into trouble doing that.  When I asked him about your work, the man at Yves LaRoche Gallerie in Montreal told me practically every object in your pieces has some specific meaning.  Perhaps you'd go through one of them for me--and why not the one he was motioning to--Auto Erotic Immolation.  Could you describe, as succinctly as possible, what each symbol represents for you, its reason for being there?

HT:  More and more, the elements aren't as individually significant as before, but there are key elements which are.  In Auto Erotic Immolation, the painting is about self-destruction through erotic pursuits.  That destruction is meant as a change of state, not as a negative impact.

--Auto Erotic Immolation (2005), oil on canvas

• The snakes in the hair are Medusa snakes = bad, or in this case, sin.
• The hands are sensual, and preoccupied with the self.
• She is a Sati, or Hindu woman, who throws herself into the funeral pyre, so her many arms attest to Hindu culture, as do the Hennaed hands.
• The image is decorative and pretty because it is happy, nonetheless.
• Red because of the inherent sensuality.
• The snails symbolize (very active) feminine arousal.
• The snakes at the base of the spine indicate Kundalini energy (represented by coiled snakes, usually), which pierce the chakras via sexual activity.
• The breasts are traditional Indian hunting lanterns.
• There is a plecostomus in the stomach in place of a baby.  The preoccupation with motherhood is frustrated, but present, nonetheless, and its associated symbols (breasts, uterus) are sterile or diverted from the real thing: the plecostomus echoes the presence of life, but doesn't allow for the real thing to take hold; and there is no milk in the breasts, rather, lantern oil, which burns along with the subject of the painting.  You can see flames at the bottom right.
  

RW: I'm going to pat myself on the back just a tiny bit because I feel like I was getting most of that--some of it maybe subconsciously--but I'm not convinced I could have gotten it all, or at least not very exactly.  Are you attracted to the idea of using symbolism from cultures other than ours here in North America (or Western Europe) because of the mystique they can have for a "normal" (relatively culturally isolated) viewer, or do you believe many symbols transcend any one specific culture?  In other words, do you believe certain symbolic elements--say snails, or the color red--come to represent certain ideas by a process that's more universal to the human condition (however subconscious it may be) than it is cultural?

HT: I'm not sure if there are universal symbolic elements.  I'd say yes--like a skull is a symbol of time and mortality--there are elements which cross over into the transpersonal, like Jungian psychology would suggest, which is very tied into Surrealism and the subconscious.

--Bemoaning the Loss of Limbo (2006), oil on canvas

RW: The tensions in your work are often quite palpable, emotional and symbolic rather than optical.  Do dissatisfactions often drive your work?  Is painting a catharsis?

HT: A painting is carthartic, for better or worse.  Dissatisfactions fuel many ideas, and the painting process is a cathartic one which allows for a release of frustration, a healing of the soul, greater understanding and wisdom, in general, and clarity of spirit.  It's clearly healthy and therapeutic.  But the problem is the source of ideas being dissatisfactions.  Sourcing oneself from challenges translates into a Sysyphian task of endless dissatisfaction and subsequent resolution to keep the flow going.  Very tiring!

RW: I tend to think life will just hand that to us whether we seek it out or not.  If at least you're drawing inspiration from it, you're making it work for you, rather than just being its hapless victim.

HT: Yeah, I think so, too.  It's 10% what happens and 90% how you react.  I think we each have a destiny of some kind and we're going to go through certain experiences no matter what.  But we can direct how it goes if we move onward and upward by our reactions, or else get sucked into mayhem and hell all over if we react in maladaptive ways.  It's all a matter of personal control.

RW: As long as it's not a secret, what do you have wet on the easel right at this moment?

HT: An image for an album cover of a winged mermaid.

RW: Thank you so much!

HT: It was my pleasure, and thank you for taking such a keen interest in my work.

Heidi Taillefer

art@heiditaillefer.com

©2008, Ryan Witte