Art/Freedom/Books/Think - for Iraq

I usually write about other people's art, but this time I want to share a project I've been working on. It's a book - handmade, hand-bound, with prints of original drawings - and I'm doing it as part of a world-wide movement called the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. The background: There was once a great Arabic writer named Abu at-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Huseyn. Born in the 10th century, he was the son of a water carrier, a born revolutionary, and a court poet for an Arab Prince. His nickname, Al-Mutanabbi, means 'the would-be prophet.'  He was eventually killed, perhaps because, in a poem, he insulted a powerful man. For centuries the Baghdad street named after him was the center of intellectual life, with books and booksellers everywhere, and cafes buzzing with lively literate discussions. But then came March 5, 2007, and life on Al-Mutanabbi Street was blown to bits by a car bomb. More than 30 people were killed, more than 100 wounded - and the heart of literate Iraq was dealt a death blow. Or at least that was the intent. Kill ideas, kill thought, kill expression - it's a rusty old weapon in the violent arsenal of control and oppression. Al Mutanabbi Street reopened for business in 2008, but no one can think it will easily return to normal. For several years, The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition has been working to counter the destruction of books, ideas, intellectual pursuits, literary accomplishment, and the dignity of the Iraqi people. The organizers, Beau Beausoleil and Sarah Bodman, have been gathering letterpress printed broadsides and artist books, giving talks, presenting exhibits, and in many other small and large ways, keeping the spirit of Al-Mutanabbi Street alive. I'm told that some early submission were focused on war. I hope mine won't be seen as war-focused, though it is impossible not to have that idea hovering nearby. I purposely chose images from daily life, including a sketch of Al-Mutanabbi Street before the blast, along with a mosque, women on the street, men in a cafe - and an American soldier, because that has also been, for too long, part of daily life there. I could not get the image of all that tragic but beautiful Arabic confetti showering down after the bomb went off out of my mind, so I've made that important. The cover text and text across the images are English translations (by Nancy Coffin) of Al-Mutanabbi poems - beautiful language but much of it chillingly prescient about harm and violence. (The title 'The Best Companions are Books Alone' is a quote.) I reduced the size of the images when I printed them before I folded them into the accordion - I wanted to make the book something that could be hidden in a pocket if necessary. The final size is about 3" x 4 1/2, opening to 10." My book is one of three I'll send them - along with the others, one of mine will be donated to the Iraqi National Library in Baghdad. The other two will become part of the exhibits and displays. 

Read Beau Beausoleil's description of the Al-Mutanabbi Coalition project here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36553491/An-Inventory-of-Al-Mutanabbi-Street

Goya - New Addition to a Complex Body of Work

Goya has always been hard to pin down. The discovery of a 'new' portrait, albeit hidden under an existing one, just adds to the complex story of this fascinating artist. Who is among the most modern of 'old masters'? Goya. Who made his living painting fawning portraits of powerful court patrons? Goya. Who is one of the most subversive of all painters? Goya. Who was one of the first realist painters? Goya. Who painted the darkest, most terrifying images in all of art? Goya. And did I mention that he had 24 children? 

The new painting, an unfinished formal portrait of a man wearing the important bling of a Napoleonic officer (it may even be Joseph Bonaparte, appointed King of Spain by his brother the Emperor) was discovered with the fresh out of the box Scanning Macro X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry, a technology developed in the Netherlands. This is a technique that "fires high-energy x-rays at the painting, which energizes the atoms causing them to release their own x-rays. By observing and analyzing this information, researchers are able to develop a color map of what lies beneath the top layer of paint. The result shows remarkable detail about what was originally on the canvas."(thanks to Geekosystem.com)

The portrait on top - the only one that counts for most of us - is one of Goya's masterpieces and the only painting by Goya in the Netherlands (at the Rijksmuseum.) It is a beauty - the subject is Judge Don Ramón Satué, a man in whose face intelligence, skepticism, compassion, and confidence all jockey for position. His hair is fashionably feathered forward, his black velvet costume, accented with white ruffles and red sash, is stylishly comfortable - no formal robes for this judge. It was painted in 1823, ten years after the French were driven out of Spain. It seems probable that Goya was commissioned to paint the underlying portrait during the French occupation; one guess for the reuse of the canvas is that he needed to get rid of any evidence of collaboration once Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne. It's unlikely that Goya would have cooperated with the Napoleonic forces willingly. His powerful The Third of May from 1808 is an eyewitness account of injustice; it screams out Goya's protest against the inhumanity of that occupation with his pitting of an innocent man - clearly marked as a symbol of all innocence by his bright white shirt and crucifix pose - against the faceless brutality of a uniformed firing squad. 

Goya lived at one of the cruelest and most crucial cusps of history, a time when old tyrannies were exploding in revolutions. Harsh, inhumane oppressions in response, did little to stem the tide of inevitable progress towards equality and democracy, but led to wide-spread misery for many innocent people. Goya witnessed all of this - in his work we find the cycle of history. The golden, sunlit days of court life edge into clear-eyed observations and documents of the wealthy and powerful, perhaps with a touch of muffled but barbed criticism, as in his celebrated portrait, The Family of Carlos IV. The march continues - he spares no detail in his witness to the unspeakable horrors of war with his incredible series of etchings, The Disasters of War, and then we watch him descend into a personal world of darkness, losing his hearing, going into exile in Bordeaux, and creating the searing, unspeakable Black Paintings and Horrors. 

Click the link below for an interactive look at the new/old Goya portraits (thanks to The Guardian UK)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2011/sep/20/goya-painting-satue-rijksmuseum-interactive?intcmp=239

Philadelphia Local - Works on Paper at PMA

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, stately and grand, perched on its acropolis like the literal and figurative temple of art that it is, contains never-ending pleasures of great reach and subtlety. You may be aware of its stellar European and American holdings - The Gross Clinic by favorite son Thomas Eakins is a highlight - but you might be surprised at its strengths include breathtaking Eastern art and architecture and a fine contemporary collection. And, more than some other major museums I could mention, PMA makes an effort to reach out to the local art community, a move appropriate for a city with some of this country's top art schools, most within walking distance of the museum. At the moment, the result of this effort is the small but intriguing show Here and Now: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by Ten Philadelphia Artists. I'm a works on paper artist myself, so this show was right up my alley. The premise is - works on paper by a selection of local artists of sound repute to one degree or another "ranging in age from 25 to 50" (an arbitrary limitation that strikes an oddly foolish note.) Two long-term professors must fulfill the upper limit (their dates are conveniently left off the signage), but most are young, ambitious, and very up-and-coming if not already arrived.  Two of the artists exhibit regularly at Gallery Joe, an excellent Old City showcase for works on paper: Mia Rosenthal was my immediate favorite. Her obsessive drawings pull you in close to intricate twists and turnings on a hunt for tiny little creatures that are hidden there, or it may be that you imagine them hiding in the foliage of her fine spidery lines. I especially loved the idea of - and the fact too - of drawing the entire contents of a sample size box of Rice Krispies, laid out Krispie by Krispie in a sinuous necklace of precise, clean, detail on creamy paper. Astrid Bowlby, the other Gallery Joe artist, is known for pushing her drawing off the wall to create Alice-in-Wonderland-like environments. Her offerings for the PMA show are fairly tame but they give the idea. In contrast to the small scale of Rosenthal's work, Serena Perrone works large; her woodcuts have a rugged, energetic quality that she tempers with fine detailed drawing in gold point and silver point. It's a highly unusual pairing that is at once startling and soothing. Daniel Heyman's provocative drypoints are art politics in action - reportage portraits of former Abu Ghraib prisoners, scratched into a metal plate (writing backwards) on the spot as the men related their stories to an American lawyer. The work has the black and white urgency of this morning's newspaper - a metaphor that's fast disappearing, but fitting for evidence of a world that is out of touch with progress.
The photographs in the exhibit moved me less, but that may be the viewpoint of an observer partial to drawing and the work of the human hand. Isaac Tin Wei Lin managed to straddle the line between the two. His bold ink cyber-patterns in harmony (or disharmony) with pastel toned photographs are visually arresting.

(Thanks to Gallery Joe for Bowlby and Rosental images)
Here and Now: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by Ten Philadelphia Artists is at The Philadelphia Museum of Art until December 4, 2011.
http://philamuseum.org/exhibitions/752.html