Two figures sharing a meal together, Dinner Date from 1963, was my introduction to Marisol’s work. I gravitated to it right away when scrolling sculpture images several years ago. I was not familiar with the artist Marisol (Maria Escobar, Venezuelan-American, 1930-2016) but kept bookmarking images of these captivating, odd, intriguing carved figures with various details highlighted, an actual shoe here, a sculpted hand there. I was immediately fascinated by Marisol’s work and vowed to see it in person.
That opportunity came this summer when my good friend Jose Gelats and I learned that the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) was showing Marisol’s work in a traveling exhibition, Marisol and Warhol Take New York, organized by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, PA.
Driving to Miami took much less time than I remembered, and winding through the streets of South Beach was pure delight. Nothing compares to the authentic, historical, elegant Art Deco buildings, an architectural Disneyland in magical pastels. We stayed at The Whitelaw Hotel on Collins Avenue, one block up from Ocean Drive, and immediately found a delicious coffee shop nearby. Across the street, we stumbled into a tucked-away hotel bar complete with a kind (patient) bartender, Darrell, who put up with two chatty Kathys. He made delicious cocktails and even talked me into trying peanut butter bourbon which insulted me at first (bourbon doesn’t need a flavor) — however, it wasn’t terrible, and now I have a bottle of my own.
Our zigzagging drive to The Pérez the following morning took us through various neighborhoods, reminding me how tropical and lush Miami is — you can round the corner and feel like you are in a dense, colorful rainforest. Vivid beauty in every direction.
Once at the Museum, I made a beeline to Marisol’s work. I breezed past the entrance layout and introductory wall text in search of the larger free standing installations — Dinner Date being a favorite (top image) and The Party, one of her most well-known (below).
It was easy to become distracted by the wooden structures and how elements were presented. When I actually locked eye-to-eye with the figures, their features were superbly drawn and many were immediately recognizable as well-known newsmakers of the time.
Who is this person who can come up with such original configurations of mediums while simultaneously rendering identities and known personalities so well, yet in an unusual, unorthodox way? Marisol also incorporated objects and fabric, yet you weren’t initially aware of the materials — at least I wasn’t at first. I was so mesmerized by the whole chunky, blocky, wood figure, or figures, that the skill, meticulous craftsmanship, and sheer artistry of a face, body, or detail was discovered moments later — and then, I would marvel at her work all over again. I’m just so darn knocked out by her work.
Standing amidst The Party guests — fifteen life-sized, carved figures in wood, each having its own dramatic flair and all sharing similar facial features — I was enchanted by the flourishes of each costume, the clever use of drama, and exposure. I also noted the aloneness of each figure — all were arranged together but hardly a connection between them.
The placement of Warhol’s loud pink and yellow cow wallpaper, running floor to ceiling behind The Party, was annoying. Obnoxious party crasher. I was incensed and confused. Why would you do that?
Marisol’s The Party, 1965-66, as installed in the exhibition Marisol and Warhol Take New York at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Listen to curator Jessica Beck from the Andy Warhol Museum discuss this particular work in a video walkthrough of Marisol and Warhol Take New York.Detail of The Party as installed at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Photo: Camp Jen
In one review I read, the author felt very much like I did but expressed the impact more clearly. “The only mistake in this display of “The Party” is the use of Warhol’s cow wallpaper as a backdrop, which grotesquely draws oxygen away from Marisol’s genius,” wrote Emily Cardenas of The Biscayne Times.
Below is an image of The Party without wallpaper distraction, as shown in The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), where is it part of the Museum’s permanent collection. TMA’s published description of the installation reads, “As someone who always felt uncomfortable in the 1960s social scene, Marisol chose to display the figures in a setting where none of them interact with each other, many appearing entirely self-absorbed. By seeing these figures up close, you will also notice that each one shares similar facial features; Marisol often used herself as a model.”
Marisol Escobar, The Party, 1965-66. As installed at the Toledo Museum of Art. For a fascinating discussion on this work, listen to Fashion & Alienation in 1960s New York with Dr. Halona Norton-Westbrook of the Toldeo Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker of Smarthistory. Photo: Dr. Steven Zucker
Perhaps TMA could add an installation addendum requesting that the piece be shown without a background, ideally a plain white wall providing a clear and undistracted view.
Installation details of The Party, 1965-66.Photos: Dr. Steven Zucker.
Meandering through the full exhibition at PAMM, I noticed that a few other installations suffered from the wallpaper cacophony. Marisol’s wonderful sculpture of John Wayne on a horse — when you look straight at it — is almost erased due to the louder, bolder cow images behind the figure (see image). Warhol continues to mark his territory in ways that hinder views of Marisol’s work. Ironically, one of the few unencumbered views of Marisol’s work is her figure of Andy Warhol himself. Andy sits — as if on a throne — in a pristine, white corner.
Marisol Escobar, John Wayne, 1963, and Andy, 1962-63.
Tricky to do, to show two very different bodies of work, together, created during the same timespan by two very different artists — both influenced by, and motivated by, the other. I find it interesting — fascinating really — to see how each chose to convey similar ideas. Marisol’s work, to me, just blows Warhol’s work away and I wince to see her unique authentic work watered down by an attempt to blend the less impressive work of another artist — or perhaps, in the opposite way, Marisol’s work shines even brighter because, when seen side-by-side, her work far surpasses Warhol’s.
“A lot of people will assume that Warhol was the famous one first, but really it was [Marisol],” says PAMM’s curator Maritza Lacayo in an art article that appeared in the Miami New Times. “There was so much about her that Warhol admired. She, in a way, inspired him.”
On our way out of town, we stumbled on the Laundromat Art Space, in the neighborhood known as Little Haiti, a clever re-use of an actual laundromat converted into a gallery and artist studios. Even though the building wasn’t open, we knocked anyway. And to our delight, an artist appeared and let us in and showed us around.
Laundromat Art Space is an artist-run studio and exhibition space located in the neighborhood of Little Haiti in Miami, Florida.
Jose and I are curious Nancy Drews at heart, and delight in aimless moseying. All we need is an inspiring anchor to organize around, and we are off and running. This last stop was a nice way to wrap up our indulgent, highly enjoyable road trip, spurred on by seeing Marisol’s work in person. Completely worth it — and really not that far from Tampa — a repeat round trip for sure.
As you drive here and there for the holidays, visiting — or escaping — family and friends, try taking the backroads instead of boring interstates; drop in a diner instead of a drive-through; visit a fruit stand instead of a jiffy store. Go in the direction of what gets your attention and tune out the obnoxious cow heads along the way.
About the exhibition
Marisol and Warhol Take New York debuted at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg in October 2021 and was curated by Jessica Beck, The Warhol’s Milton Fine Curator of Art. On view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami from April 15, 2022, through September 5, 2022, it was organized by Franklin Sirmans, Director, and Martiza Lacayo, Assistant Curator.
About the author
Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is a regional art consultant and independent curator living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibson is the former Director of the Hillsborough Community College (HCC) Dale Mabry Gallery, which was rebranded Gallery221@HCC. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window Project and was selected for an ArtsUp Grant by Creative Pinellas as creator and curator of the 2019 summer exhibition Tonge & Groove. Creating temporary exhibits in alternative spaces is a focus, and so far, has included storefront windows, empty lofts, rustic lake houses, and her home. Current projects include selecting artwork for various client environments, hosting exhibitions in ArtHouse Upstairs and writing the occasional piece for Bay Art Files.
Over the past decade, immersive art has grown from a niche market to mainstream popularity, much to the delight or disgust of many in the art world. From rotating projections of Starry Night to Meow Wolf’s growing repertoire, an increasing number of mainstream audiences are engaging with this medium. As it grows, we are challenged to define it, evaluate it, and integrate it into our own arts communities. Tampa Bay is eager to join the conversation—and has a lot to offer to it—with an array of examples from our own past, present, and future.
Immersive Art and its Origins
To discuss immersive art, we first need a definition: Generally, immersive art is an embodied, 360-degree experience where the boundary between “viewer” and “art” is dissolved through active participation and multi-sensory engagement. Primarily rooted in the visual arts, other disciplines including theatre, music, story-telling, film/video, dance, fashion, and culinary arts may play a role. Many definitions out there cite virtual reality, video projection, and laser light shows, but that only represents one approach; immersive art may also be created from more tactile, traditional processes.
“Immersive art…has a simple definition—it’s the creation of a world around the person in a way that makes them feel part of and inside of it. In practice, the label of immersive art touches on everything from illusory world-building to simply including a piece of interactivity within a larger, traditional art show. The true meaning of immersive art is somewhere between those two things…[it] must create something that moves beyond the fourth wall…bringing viewers into the art and augmenting their reality.”1
Immersive art seeks to demolish the division between capital-A “Art” and life, and between art object and viewer, but the concept behind this 21st-century trend is nothing new. Throughout history and around the globe, more often than not, art and life have been deeply integrated. For example, among the thousands of cultural groups across the vast continent of Africa—such as the Yoruba, Igbo, and Dogon people—visual, performance, and literary arts are inseparable from each other and from the participatory ceremonies they accompany. (For this reason, it is absurd to display them as stand-alone “art” objects in Western museums.)
Such ceremonial markers of holidays and life’s milestones are—in Western terms—interdisciplinary, embodied art experiences. These events incorporate community members to such a degree that there is no distinguishing lexicon for “art” as a stand-alone concept in many global languages. Hand-crafted objects, costuming, music, food and drink, spoken word, dance, and theater are combined together and imbued with symbolism to create authentic, transformative experiences for participants. There is no line between “art” and “audience” because the participation of all parties is a fundamental element.2 We must acknowledge the deep history and global presence of this approach to the “arts,” lest we support the false narrative that it is a contemporary, Western invention.
Art, That’s Immersive
The canon of Eurocentric Art History includes early examples of immersive or experiential art occurring in more traditional museum and gallery settings:
Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds, first exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City in 1966, lives on in contemporary iterations. The gallery is filled with rectangular metallic silver balloons that reflect the environment around them and belie their hefty appearance to float whimsically from floor to ceiling. Viewers are invited to walk amongst them and touch them, their movements becoming an integral element of the artwork.3
In 1971, Robert Morris filled the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) sculpture hall with “interactive sculptures that would experiment with conceptions about sculptural space and human physicality by having museum-goers put their own bodies to the test.” Minimalist sculptural objects such as ramps, cylinders, and beams were transformed into useful objects, emphasizing the viewers’ interactions with them as the “art,” and the sculptures as a tool to achieve an embodied aesthetic experience.4
The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, first completed in 1971, is an octagonal brick building with a skylight, containing 14 murals by Mark Rothko in varying shades of black. It is “a spiritual space, a forum for world leaders, a place for solitude and gathering. It’s an epicenter for civil rights activists, a quiet disruption, a stillness that moves.”5 Its somber interior is designed to engulf the viewer and foster deeper contemplation. In the words of Tampa-based artist and educator Noelle Mason, Rothko Chapel is “immersive but not entertaining.”6
Yayoi Kusama has become a global sensation for her polka-dotted infinity rooms, including the 2018 exhibition Love is Calling at the Tampa Museum of Art (heralded by Tampa Bay Times as “incredibly Instagram-able.”7) But the 93-year-old artist has been making viewer-interactive artwork since 1966, when she was banned from performing with her controversial work Narcissus Garden at the Venice Biennale: Kusama, dressed in a kimono, sold the mirrored vinyl balls that comprised the installation to passersby for 2 dollars each, a critique of the commercialization of art.8
James Turrell’s “skyspaces,” a series initiated in 1973, feature an “aperture cut into the roof of a building that causes the visible plane of the sky to appear flat at the level of the opening.” They encourage experiential interaction by the viewer and a suspension of time and space.9 One of these—Joseph’s Coat—is installed at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota.
Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds (2010) consists of a pile of millions of unique handcrafted porcelain sunflower seed replicas on which the public is encouraged to walk. This interaction symbolizes the “complex exchanges between the one and the many.”10
A recent example is Ernesto Neto’s SunForceOceanLife (2021), a “hand-crocheted, walkable maze of yellow, orange, and green threads that stretch 79 feet across the gallery and spiral 12 feet in the air.”11 This joyful piece turns museum-goers from passive observers into active playmates, all inside of the austere white box of the gallery.
Self-Identified “Immersive Art Experiences”
The name most likely to draw recognition of the immersive-art-experience world is Meow Wolf. The group started as a grassroots team of outcasts from the Santa Fe, NM arts scene who turned a rented warehouse into a punk art space in 2008. They opened their first permanent immersive art installation, House of Eternal Return, in 2016, drawing 400,000 visitors—almost six times the population of Santa Fe—that year alone.12 Their rapid success drew the attention of investors and they’ve been growing since, with installations Omega Mart (Las Vegas, NV) and Convergence Station (Denver, CO) opening in 2021, and plans to expand to Grapevine, TX in 2023 and Houston, TX in 2024.13
Meow Wolf pioneered a new kind of attraction somewhere in the gray area between art and entertainment. Visitors create their own non-linear journey through a space where everything can be touched and the narrative is unclear. I have yet to visit any of Meow Wolf’s installations myself, so I can’t speak directly to them, but what seems to set them apart from a mainstream attraction like Disney World is their subversive edge, layered conceptual foundation, and eccentric aesthetic. Some in the art world have rejected their work as art, but cofounder Sean Di Ianni says, “We consider what we do to be art—very much. But if the art world doesn’t like that, that’s fine.”14
Since Meow Wolf’s meteoric rise, a number of permanent immersive arts attractions have cropped up around the country and globally, including AREA15 in Las Vegas, NV (which houses Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, and will open another location in Orlando, FL in 2024); Superblue and Artechouse in Miami, FL; Seismique in Houston, TX; Otherworld in Colombus, OH; Wisdome LA in Los Angeles, CA; teamLab experiences in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Macau, Japan; and Atelier des Lumières in Paris, France.15 It’s fair to say we are well past “trend” territory and well into an art/entertainment hybrid discipline to be reckoned with. Tampa Bay is in on it, too, with Fairgrounds St. Pete opening in December 2021, and Crab Devil’s The Peninsularium slated for 2022. (More on them, soon.)
Fairgrounds St. Pete, St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo credit: Copyright Fairgrounds St. Pete
Recent History of Immersive Art in Tampa Bay
I reached out to leaders in Tampa Bay’s art community to hear their thoughts on immersive art in general and the medium’s history and presence in the region. Though the first “true” permanent immersive art attraction opened in 2021 (Fairgrounds St. Pete), there is a long precedent of immersive, interactive, and experiential art in Tampa Bay worth noting.
One of the first names that came to mind for many was the Vinik Family Foundation, which brought the above-mentioned Yayoi Kusama installation to the Tampa Museum of Art in 2018. They also presented the popular installation TheBeach Tampa by Snarkitecture at Amelie Arena in 2016. The massive venue featured a “15,000-square-foot immersive environment featuring an “ocean” of 1.2 million recyclable and antimicrobial white balls” and was open to the public free of cost. This whimsical installation inspired joy for visitors of all ages and backgrounds.16
Earlier this year, the Vinik Family Foundation brought Lucy Sparrow’s Tampa Fresh Foods to Water Street. Sparrow’s “grocery store” was filled with over 50,000 handmade felt replicas of common consumable products. Gallery attendants became supermarket associates and Sparrow herself manned the register. Outfitted with shopping baskets, visitors could buy reasonably priced artwork/products, the proceeds of which benefitted the local nonprofits Feeding Tampa Bay and Tampa Arts Alliance.17
Walking into Tampa Fresh Foods, I instantly had a smile on my face—it was pure delight. Coke, ketchup, tampons, and shrimp smiled back at you from the shelves. I must have walked down each aisle ten times, each time seeing something new and remarking to a stranger, “Did you see the green onions?!” For me, the installation was successful beyond pure entertainment because, on closer inspection, it subversively critiqued advertising, excess, over-consumption, waste, and the paradox of choice.Even if you didn’t read into it on that level, it brought a bunch of strangers into a space to smile and laugh together, and that’s something.
One of my favorite examples of Tampa’s immersive-art past is The Music Box: Tampa Bay, created in 2016 in Mann-Wagnon Park in Sulphur Springs along the Hillsborough River. Commissioned by the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum (USFCAM) in partnership with Community Stepping Stones and curated by Sarah Howard (Curator of Public Art and Social Practice, USF), The Music Box: Tampa Bay followed in the footsteps of the first installation of The Music Box in New Orleans in 2011, a concept for musical architecture developed by New Orleans Airlift (NOA) and artist Swoon. National and local artists and students used reclaimed materials from the site to build sound-producing structures that grew into a musical village. For a month in 2016, the site was programmed with free cultural events, including musical performances, artist talks, historical talks about the history of Sulphur Springs, jam sessions, open mic nights, and yoga. Visitors were invited to open play days where they could make their own sounds and interact with the site.18
When I spoke with Sarah Howard about immersive art and what makes a work successful, she identified qualities that I believe The Music Box: Tampa Bay achieved: It sparked joy and a sense of wonder, created a common space for all to access and play, built common ground that spans all identities, and spurred action on otherwise difficult-to-tackle issues.19 I also appreciate that this project integrated the existing community where it was sited, brought together national and local artists, and worked across disciplines and generations to create a space where everyone felt included and welcomed.
My interviewees cited a number of less-well-documented examples, as well:
Devon Brady, CEO of Crab Devil, cited Mac Wellman’s play Bad Penny, performed on the banks of the Hillsborough River; the annual Gala Corina art fair in the early 2000s; and exhibitions in the 90s and 2000s by Experimental Skeleton, in which Brady took part.20
Howard mentioned curator Dave Hickey’s Ultralounge: The Return of Social Space at USFCAM in 2000, where the gallery was transformed into a nightclub lounge.19
Tracy Midulla, Founder and Director of Tempus Projects, included in this list the gallery’s 2014 film and projection exhibition The Room is Empty; Benjamin Zellmer Bellas’ self-explanatory A 1993 Mercedes-Benz Is Filled with Sequins and Flipped Over onto Its Roof by Millennials, curated by Parallelogram for Coco Hunday; and Meg Leary’s Ride of the Valkyries, curated by Cunsthaus, featuring flying hairdryers and live opera singing.21
Surely, the eclectic list could go on, but I include these examples here to illustrate the historic swell that has developed into the recent wave of immersive art spaces in Tampa Bay.
Permanent Immersive Art Attractions in Tampa Bay
The first permanent self-identified “immersive art attraction” in Tampa Bay is Fairgrounds St. Pete, which opened in December 2021 and is located in St. Pete’s Warehouse Arts District. They’ve commissioned over 60 artists to collaborate in creating a “choose-your-own experience destination” integrating artwork with “layers of experiential innovation, using technology creatively to drive interactivity and immersive gaming.”22 Fairgrounds St. Pete emphasizes play as an entry point to the underlying narrative of their Florida-centric installation, which may be investigated as deeply as each guest desires.
Fairgrounds St. Pete, St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo credit: Copyright Fairgrounds St. Pete
I was quick to become a Fairgrounds St. Pete Immersive member in 2021 and was among the first groups of guests to visit, and have been back since. The adventure begins in a throwback Florida motel lobby with no clear roadmap on where to head next (intentionally!). I took the route of focusing on the artistic aspects, wandering through each room, appreciating the aesthetics of it all and dissecting concepts behind the artwork. I’ve never been much of a gamer, but I watched those around me enthusiastically search for clues and discover hidden codes to trigger actions, such as an epic Everglades thunderstorm on the 50-foot projection screen (collaboration with Olivia Sebeskey). Fairgrounds St. Pete’s creative approach to gamifying the space is likely a strong entry point for many, though, for me, I was happy to explore it more like an art gallery.
A few installations, in particular, stand out to me: First, Mike Hicks’ A Mysterious Portal to the Bay. I almost walked past the small, dark niche toward the back of the building, but when I noticed it and walked up, I couldn’t pull myself away. It’s a quiet and unassuming installation depicting a bridge underpass that appears to extend miles into the distance over a body of water toward a city skyline. The gently ebbing water glints with blue light and creates a soft splashing sound over muffled cars passing above. It transports you, and that makes for a great piece of art.
Strawberry Room by Macy Eats Paint and Emiliano Settecasi, St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo Credit: Copyright Fairgrounds St. Pete
I also love the Strawberry Room by Macy Eats Paint and Emiliano Settecasi, for very different reasons. It’s sweet and delightful and hits a “critical mass” (as we say in the art world) of charming strawberry cuteness. It’s adorable, but also seductive and a bit hedonistic. It’s that little bit of edge that pushes it to another level, enticing you to plunder a decadent strawberry cupcake off the neat little dessert cart and scarf it down in three indulgent bites. (But don’t, it’s sculpture.)
Electric Sky Lounge by Neil Mendoza, St. Petersburg, Florida. Photo Credit: Copyright Fairgrounds St. Pete
Electric Sky Lounge, which opened in March 2022 and features work by Neil Mendoza, is another stand-out for me. Hand-turned cranks control 3D-printed hands that exist seamlessly both as physical objects and digital images on the screens in front of them. You have full control over the hands’ simple movements, which impact cute and irreverently funny animations of animals: You can pet a shedding dog, smash a chicken, or upend a floating duck. Mendoza’s work awakened the gamer in me.
Cultural Currency by Illsol and New Roots Art Collective, mural installed on the exterior of one of Crab Devil’s shipping container installations at The Peninsularium, Tampa, Florida. Photo Credit: Copyright Crab Devil
Tampa Bay’s next permanent immersive art attraction will be Crab Devil’s The Peninsularium, expected to open in 2022 in the Ybor Heights neighborhood of Tampa.* The Peninsularium starts in a reimagined Florida Bait Shop and continues on to a maze of 25+ shipping containers, each holding an artist-made, Florida-inspired installation; a subtle but discoverable overarching narrative lies below the surface. Crab Devil CEO Devon Brady writes:
“We want our viewers to be surprised by what they see, but we want the mechanisms by which that sense of surprise is achieved to be discoverable to the engaged viewer, and for that knowledge to give them a greater insight and appreciation for the real-world magic that surrounds us all the time. We like to bring the viewer in on the secret—to show them what we like to call “the artifacts of artifice.” We want our experiences to have depth—for them to reveal their secrets on both micro and macro levels.”20
This intention is evident in the “preview” installations that Crab Devil has presented at Tampa events in the past couple years—Munchausen Waves at the 2021 Gasparilla Music Festival and The Bait Ball at Gasparilla Festival of the Arts earlier this year, both created by Devon Brady. Munchausen Waves is a kinetic sculpture and overhead shade structure inspired by a “Renaissance-era theatrical illusion developed by Italian stage illusionist Nicola Sabbatini.” It uses basic mechanics and mathematical synchronization to produce an optical illusion of an undulating wave-like surface.23 On one side, the discs are painted shades of red, orange, and yellow, evoking fire or the sun. On the other side, the discs are shades of blue and green, referencing water or the sky. The billowing colors are both calming and menacing, but you can also focus your eye—the way you would on a single blade of a fan—to see the simple composition behind the magical visual effect.
The Bait Ball is housed in a 40-foot shipping container, like many of the installations at The Peninsularium will be. Guests enter to find themselves inside a cage-like steel structure lined with illuminated kelp. On one end, a tiny peephole invites a look inside a miniature diorama depicting an underwater scene (by artist Phil Roach). On the other end, a round steel ball holding a grid of white fish begins to spin. The fish start to blur just as a strobe light turns on, transforming their blurred movement into a 3D zoetrope—out of nowhere, the fish appear to be swimming in a continuous circulating motion. Before you can pull your jaw off the floor, the strobe light turns off and the mechanics of the illusion are again revealed.24 As with Munchausen Waves, the curtain is pulled back, and what you see there only makes the work that much more compelling. Crab Devil approaches immersive art with tactile materials and analog technologies blended with media arts and modern technologies. I look forward to experiencing the completed attraction.
Recreating Historical Art as Immersive
I’ve encountered a range of skepticism on the subject of immersive art, but one common enemy seems to emerge: Immersive Van Gogh, and its contemporaries (immersive Monet, Kahlo, Klimt, etc.). Their primary offenses include: 1. The artist whose work is featured did not intend it to be presented that way (i.e. they’re all dead), 2. The physical medium in which the artist originally created their work is central to its significance (i.e. the fact that it’s a painting is fundamental), and 3. They are geared toward consumptive entertainment rather than thoughtful contemplation or meaningful experience. But, they are also a part of the region’s immersive art experience “scene” and demand inclusion.
Beyond Van Gogh Sarasota, Florida. Photo credit: Jessica Todd
The art world’s palpable disdain for these kinds of attractions meant only one thing: I had to go and see for myself. So, I mustered all of my judgment-withholding strength and set off to see Beyond Van Gogh Sarasota and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition. At a ticket price of $55.99, Beyond Van Gogh Sarasota (produced by Paquin Entertainment Group and Normal Studio), is located in a massive white tent in an empty field adjacent to the University Town Center Mall parking lot. Inside, the self-guided tour begins with an illuminated biographical timeline and information about Van Gogh’s work. A small room of colorful lights is the precursor to the main event: A 30,000-square-foot room with a 35-minute loop of wall and floor projections of Van Gogh’s work, sprinkled with historical quotes and photographs set to instrumental music and the occasional voiceover. Visitors seemed conscientious in reading about Van Gogh’s life and work, and gazed attentively—necks craned—at the kinetic animations of his famous paintings.
Beyond Van Gogh Sarasota, Florida. Photo credit: Jessica ToddBeyond Van Gogh Sarasota, Florida. Photo credit: Jessica ToddBeyond Van Gogh Sarasota, Florida Photo credit: Jessica Todd
It was pretty, I’ll give them that—a fantastic choice for a Tinder profile picture background. But the wobbling projections and bold aesthetic choices on behalf of the creators were distracting for me. The animators made the sky swirl—an obvious choice—but also cut-and-pasted flowers from one painting over another, created an odd patchwork-quilt grid of Van Gogh’s signature, flew birds across skies, walked figures across city blocks, and superimposed slowly disintegrating paintings on top of each other as a transition effect. As Noelle Mason pointed out in our conversation back in April, the whole point of Van Gogh’s paintings is that they were paintings—his brushstrokes defied their static permanence and came to life on their own, without the assistance of an app.6Beyond Van Gogh didn’t foster a deeper understanding or appreciation for me. In fact, it was a bit sad, having seen his work in person. Sorry, Van Gogh, capitalism did you dirty on this one.
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition. Photo credit: Jessica Todd
At Westshore Mall in Tampa, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition (produced by SEE Global Entertainment and Bridgeman Images) is a few storefronts down from Selfie Wrld Tampa (perhaps the perfect Influencer one-stop-shop?). The familiar scent of Auntie Annie’s pretzels wafts through the air as you enter the gutted Sears department store. It’s a vibe. Inside, for a $22.60 ticket, you find larger-than-life prints of Michelangelo’s famed frescoes accompanied by informational text and a self-directed audio guide. Where Beyond Van Gogh focuses on an aesthetic experience, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel seems more focused on education. (To be fair, it isn’t advertised as “immersive,” but the terms “360-degree” and “experience” are used in their advertising.) The prints were a bit pixelated and the stained mall carpeting a bit depressing, but the text and audio information were thorough. The attraction was quite well-attended for noon on a weekday, mostly older folks but some young people, too. It was better than I anticipated, but in a different way.
Perhaps the question here is not, “What is the quality of the experience?” but, “What would the visitors be doing if they weren’t here?” Getting thousands of people to spend an hour or so learning about Art History before heading off to the food court is a major feat, one that museums struggle to accomplish. The popular, commercial aspect of these attractions provides access. As a reviewer of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel says, “We may never make it to Rome so this was a good substitute for us.” Or for others, it can be an inspiration—one Facebook user writes, “The bucket list now contains the yearning to see the real thing.”
Another gem Noelle Mason shared with me was that the (actual) Sistine Chapel is an immersive space and it was built so that everything around you inspires awe.6 This is absolutely true, and cathedrals, mosques, and other religious spaces may very well be the “OG” permanent immersive art spaces. The Sistine Chapel undoubtedly holds the potential to be an awe-inspiring space. But it’s worth noting that I went to the Sistine Chapel in my early 20s: My neck bent up toward the ceiling, shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd of sweaty tourists while guards screamed, “Foto NO,” every three seconds when someone snapped an unauthorized picture—I don’t think this was Michelangelo’s vision either.
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition. Photo credit: Jessica Todd
The lesson here, and perhaps the lesson for all contemporary immersive art spaces, is that you can’t force an “experience” on anyone. You can facilitate it, but experiences have to happen to you. A few weeks after that visit to the Sistine Chapel, I remember wandering into a little-known, mostly empty cathedral in Spain on an arbitrary Thursday evening. The golden-hour sun set the stained-glass windows ablaze and the gilded alter aglow, and the rehearsing choir echoed in the nave. Out of nowhere, I had an immersive arts experience, one I can remember far more vividly than many of the famous landmarks I visited. Perhaps one of the people I walked past in Westshore Mall, with its chipped tile and faint mildew scent, plastic audio guide pressed to their ear, staring on at Adam’s pixelated finger, had an experience. Who am I to judge?
Evaluating Immersive Art
Perhaps due to our global histories of these kinds of experiences, a major strength of immersive art is its accessibility. For many, an art museum is simply not welcoming: A chilly white room with signs reading “Do Not Touch,” a uniformed guard shushing, plaques with big words and old dates, accessed through an epic stone façade. It screams, “Not for everyone.” Immersive art asks you to touch, encourages photos, induces laughter, and speaks through entertainment instead of academics. It is familiar and democratized, providing more inclusive access to the arts, at least on a psychological level. (Ticket prices are sometimes quite high and can become a barrier to access.)
Larger audiences bring more money—and we all know funding to be the Achilles heel of the art world. What’s not to like about that? It’s worth noting here that immersive art experiences seem to be most popular in the heavily commercialized parts of the world: the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan. They can be money-makers, and that brings with it a focus on marketing, social media, and entertainment. The work may become too palatable, shifting the role of the artist from culture-maker to content creator.
I have yet to find an article written about immersive art that does not include the mention of Instagram or selfies. Is this a symptom of the immersive art-beast, or simply a sign of the times? We’ve all seen the Darwin Awards-esque news stories about people being gored by wild animals or plummeting from cliffs while trying to snap envy-inducing photos; we’ve read about natural wonders destroyed by hordes of selfie-takers. Perhaps in the 2020s any awe-inspiring visual scene will be reduced to influencer content to some degree.
Should immersive art welcome the free publicity? On the positive side, it increases revenue to the often-underfunded creative sector, and it bolsters access to art for those who feel excluded by high-brow galleries and museums. Or, should we admonish the dumbing down and corporatization of one of humanity’s greatest intellectual and cultural pursuits? Rather than conclude in strict “yes” or “no” answers, these questions can instead prompt thoughtful exploration into the intentions and outcomes of immersive art projects.
“True immersive art experiences ask us to use something called narrative transport. This is the idea of losing yourself in a story or getting caught up in one. When narrative transport is used properly, one of the values of the immersive experience is that it imparts a more profound meaning to the participant through use of kinetic sympathy, or accessing emotions by interacting with something. When narrative transport is used for something else—like advertising—it cheapens the whole label of immersive.”1
When it comes to art in any form, I’m a believer that all of it is valuable in its own way. Whether it’s a paint-by-numbers kit or an elaborate full-length opera, it’s all good for something. However, I also believe in applying a critical eye to the arts for the sake of education and advancement. As we develop the canon of 21st-century immersive art, we must also develop a rubric and language for evaluating it. What makes a high-quality immersive art experience? How does it move beyond superficial awe and photo backdrops to become transformative, profound, and intellectually challenging?
“We cannot resurrect the old system of art. Nor can we simply wish away the break that split apart the old system of art, arrogating intellect, imagination, and grace to fine art and disparaging craft and popular culture as the realm of mere technique, utility, entertainment, and profit. Like other dualisms that have plagued our culture, the divisions of the fine art system can only be transcended through a continuing struggle.”25
Just as in other art disciplines, evaluation investigates form and function: High-quality craftsmanship and technique, appealing aesthetics achieved through principles of design, compelling storylines, and a cohesive concept that is legible to the viewer are fundamental components of a successful work of art. Work should build upon historical references in innovative ways while contributing to contemporary conversations. Great artwork suspends time, stirs emotion, makes you view the world differently, and stays with you for years to come. Evaluating art of any kind is, of course, highly subjective, but the exercise is nonetheless important.
Conclusion
As much as immersive art experiences are enjoying a rise in popularity, they are also subject to a great deal of skepticism—from the general public due to their unconventionality, and from the art world due to their popular appeal. As Sarah Howard pointed out to me, this is not unlike any other medium of art experiencing a new rise in popularity: It took photographers decades to be considered artists; digital art wasn’t taken seriously until the 2010s; and today, we raise an eyebrow at NFTs. The immersive art field has a long road ahead to prove its chops and lower eyebrows, but I believe Tampa Bay has the talent and grit to take it on.
Thank you to the arts and culture leaders in the Tampa Bay community who took the time to speak with me on this topic: Janine Awai, Crab Reckoner at Crab Devil; Devon Brady, CEO of Crab Devil; the team at Fairgrounds St. Pete; Sarah Howard, Curator of Public Art and Social Practice for the Institute for Research in Art at the University of South Florida (USF); Noelle Mason, artist and professor at USF; and Tracy Midulla, Director of Tempus Projects. Learn more about Fairgrounds St. Pete at https://fairgrounds.art and Crab Devil at https://crabdevil.com.
*Note from the author: In full disclosure, I have been a part-time staff member of Crab Devil since January 2022. This article was written from my personal perspective—sparked by the cropping up of immersive experiences in the Tampa Bay region—and does not represent the viewpoints of any of my employers, past or present.
Jessica Todd is a writer, curator, artist, and arts administrator based in Tampa, FL. She is the Development Coordinator for Tempus Projects and the Administrative Coordinator for Crab Devil. Jess is passionate about building the creative infrastructures that support artists and arts organizations, as well as studying and addressing issues of equity, access, and inclusion in the arts. Prior to moving to Tampa in 2020, she was the Residency Manager at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL for six years. She holds a BA in Metal Art & Technology from Penn State University and an MFA in Jewelry/Metals from Kent State University.
Jacqueline Chanda. “A Theoretical Basis for Non-Western Art History Instruction.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 27, no. 3 (1993): 73–84, https://doi.org/10.2307/3333249.
David Clowney, “A Third System of the Arts? An Exploration of Some Ideas from Larry Shiner’s The Invention of Art: A Cultural History,” Contemporary Aesthetics, vol. 6 (2008), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7523862.0006.004.
The Constant Curator: The Important Work of Nellie Mae Rowe
by Katherine Gibson
The exhibition REALLY FREE: THE RADICAL ART OF NELLIE MAE ROWE was on view at the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta, Georgia, from September 3, 2021 – January 9, 2022, and was organized by Katherine Jentleson, the Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art.
Entrance to “Really Free”; High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Nellie Mae Rowe greeted me at the gate to her home – at least her likeness did, in the blown-up, life-sized, black and white image of her at the entrance to what she called her Playhouse (referring to her house and yard area). The giant fuchsia wall to the right presented Nellie’s artistic signature as an essential part of the exhibit title, “Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe.”
It was the day after Christmas. My sister Jane and I, along with our niece Katie, took in the Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900-1982) exhibit at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Jane and Katie walked through the show, reading the text for each piece and following the gallery sequence. I’m envious of people who can do that. I don’t seem to be able to go in order, and as a result, I often miss important connections. What I’m always most interested in, is the overall feel of a show, the environment created, the mood and the flow of how someone may experience it. I amble around the space, in no organized way, absorbing visual impressions and relationships.
After a few times around in various directions, I found I wanted the exhibit to feel more connected. The spacing between pieces and groupings was generous, perhaps more than needed. Given that Nellie’s home was chock full of colorful things and objects inside and out – the galleries were spare in comparison, and somewhat static. I felt like the layout could have infused more of the vibrant energy, conviction and general playfulness that Nellie lived by.
That said though, how do you infuse a stagnant exhibit with Nellie’s kind of joyful flow? How do you translate her world into a world others can experience – and, do you need to?
In ruminating over the exhibit and these questions, I can understand what a challenge it was to come up with the best way to show Nellie Mae Rowe’s work. The environment she created throughout her home and property had the same traits as the images she created: layered and overlapping; full of rich color from end to end; animals, objects, plants, sculptures all existing together. One was not separate from the other. I don’t think I got this until later, when I was scrolling through my images, still feeling like something was missing, and then it dawned on me that it was near impossible to convey Nellie’s world without her masterpiece Playhouse.
That’s where an unbelievable scale model of Nellie’s Playhouse comes in. Unique to this exhibit, Opendox, a New York documentary-making firm, created two scale models of the Playhouse – the first model was of the entire property presented on a large, flat, table-like surface akin to something a model train environment might sit on. The second model was larger, and was assembled in a corner area near the end of the exhibit, with created interior rooms the size of a child’s playroom.
Model of Nellie Mae Rowe’s Playhouse (detail). High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
Model of Nellie Mae Rowe’s Playhouse. High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
The miniature model of the entire property drew me in and completely blew my mind due to the amazing detail, down to the tiniest possible replica of the many objects scattered throughout Nellie’s environment. Same with the child-sized model of interior rooms of the Playhouse, created to use in filming the documentary about Nellie and her life. “This World is Not My Own” will be available later this year and will be fascinating to watch – not only to learn more about Nellie Mae Rowe and her unapologetic way of living her creative life, but also to see these astounding, meticulously created sets in context. (https://thisworldisnotmyown.com/)
My sister really loved the short film about the making of the documentary that was part of the exhibit, next to the scale house created for the filming. Those components of the exhibit, she said, helped her get a palpable sense of Nellie’s world and gave context for how Nellie lived. Jane appreciated the tactile model combined with the sound in the film because it made the experience of Nellie’s garden come alive for her.
Strangers Welcomed
Nellie’s home was in a small town west of Atlanta.
“When passersby in sleepy Vinings saw Nellie Mae Rowe’s decorated yard packed with handmade dolls and chewing gum sculptures and beads and wigs hanging from trees, they didn’t know what to make of it,” wrote Bo Emerson in an article for The Atlanta-Journal-Constitution (May 18, 2021). “Some gawked. Some thought she was a “hoodoo” woman or a fortune teller. Some pitched bottles through her windows and broke her flower pots. She met all responses with poise. Those who threw missiles, she invited in to see her yard and her ‘playhouse.’ …Her guestbook was signed by more than 800 people who had toured her house and gardens just from May 1973 to March 1975.”
Still from High Museum of Art Curator Video Diary: Who Nellie Mae Rowe Was (Available on YouTube).
Chewing Gum Sculpture
The idea of creating figures out of chewing gum initially repulsed me but in the context of Nellie’s clever resourcefulness, I found it humorous, especially when I saw the figure featured in the exhibit. “He” was an animal – possibly a cat – with a hair mustache and a large plastic flower on his backside (see image). As I took him in, I noticed how well he was formed and sculpted; a concentrated effort yet it still had the playful lightness Nellie brought to her creations.
“I chewed a lot of chewing gum because the doctor said chewing would help the jumping in my head. People began bringing me packages of chewing gum. And I said, now as much chewing gum as I chew, I’m going to make something. So I saved my chewing gum and when I saved a big ball, I started making things. I used to have chewing gum cats and dogs all up and down my fence. Now, I chew gum just to make things.” (https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/nellie- mae-rowe)
You can imagine the delight she must have felt in bringing this mustached character to life, adding white decorative beads and a smaller flower on his head casually cocked to one side, like a British fascinator.
He was a feature in the exhibition, singled out, and presented on a large pedestal, under a tall clear bonnet – all adding to his importance, which made him even more entertaining to me.
Untitled (Chewing Gum Sculpture), before 1978, front. High Museum of Art.
Untitled (Chewing Gum Sculpture), before 1978, back. High Museum of Art.
Judith & Nellie Mae
Nellie met gallerist Judith Alexander when she was in her late 70s. They knew each other only a few years, yet it seems like – from all accounts – they deeply trusted each other and formed a unique and solid friendship. On the Judith Alexander Foundation website is a section about Nellie with a description of their influences on each other:
“Of all the artists whose lives Judith Alexander touched, none was as strong an influence on her as Nellie Mae Rowe. It’s safe to surmise that Judith’s influence on Nellie was equally powerful. Theirs was a relationship that took the notion of synergy way beyond its boundaries.
“Judith saw to it that Nellie Mae Rowe’s legacy would endure with her major gift of works to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Judith also established The Nellie Mae Rowe Gallery at the museum, an area exclusively dedicated to a rotating display of the work.” (www.judithalexander.org/brief-biography)
One of the pieces that resonated with me was a detailed, colored drawing of two, almost identical houses, side by side. The form of a tree is drawn rising up from the center where the houses are joined. On the top of each roof is a figure – one appears to be the figure most often associated with Judith (lighter skin tone and more formally dressed) and the other most likely representing Nellie. As I study the drawing, it clearly conveys to me that each figure has their own domain yet their intersection is strong, beautiful and growing.
Untitled (Nellie and Judith’s Houses), 1978-1982, crayon, marker, and pencil on paper.
The exhibition wall text reads: “These conjoined houses signify how the destinies of Rowe and her gallerist Judith Alexander were mutually dependent. Alexander had been showing contemporary art for decades, but her close relationship with Rowe led her to become one of the South’s only gallerists dedicated to self-taught artists.”
Sense of Place
To look at pictures of the inside and outside of Nellie’s home, you may think things were strewn willy-nilly but Judith Alexander made a point of saying (in some of the referenced videos) that Nellie used the word “placed” when talking about arranging pieces in her home, and further explained that she purposely put things in a certain location because that’s how she wanted to see them. I think of Nellie as a constant curator, incorporating pieces she made or found, with pieces and things people gave her.
Nellie shares some of the things her visitors would bring her in this interview transcript available on the Souls Grown Deep Foundation site:
“The yard was decorated pretty. Because of the talent God gave me, manypeople started visiting and taking pictures. What is exciting and surprising andmakes me feel good is to think about the people I would never have seen if I hadnot been doing things that were interesting to them. Folks brought me all kinds ofthings: dolls, stuffed animals, beads, bottles, and sometimes strangers wouldleave things at my gate. I would place them in my yard and some I would hangindoors against the walls. Everything else, other than what people gave me, Ipicked up. I like it when things keep on changing; keeps me busy.”
Rolling Tree Mule
Rolling Tree Mule, 1981, crayon and ink on paper, gift of Martha and Jim Sweeny in memory of Judith Alexander. Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida.
Two works by Nellie Mae Rowe are included in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) St. Petersburg, Florida, collection. One is seen above. This image of Rolling Tree Mule is also included on their website, highlighting pieces from the permanent collection, and offers this brief summery of Rowe’s life:
Rowe faced racism and discrimination, was widowed twice, and worked as a domestic for roughly thirty years. Born in Fayetteville, Georgia, she spent most of her life in Vinings, outside of Atlanta. Her parents were farmers and also made handicrafts: her father, born into slavery in 1851, smithed and made baskets; her mother made quilts. As a girl, Rowe made dolls out of rags and figures from chewing gum. In 1948, after the death of her second husband, she began making art, “something out of nothing.” She saw her artistic life as a second childhood, terming her home “Nellie’s Playhouse.”
Play
Rowe was proud and happy about what she was creating. When creativity comes purely and directly through a person, it doesn’t need explanation, permission or approval. The result is the rawest and most authentic kind of expression.
In Nellie Mae Rowe 1 video (YouTube, 1976), Nellie is moving around her garden area, sweeping, planting, and fussing with various things as she meanders. Her voice can be heard over the footage, explaining “I do too many things, start sewing, next thing, I’m outdoors in my hole (garden), then uh, put that down, and then go to drawing a little, that’s just how it go… I never finish nothing at once. I just enjoy playing like that. I’m like a child. I wanna play in my Playhouse.”
Closing
At the start of this writing, I was seeking to share impressions of the High Museum’s exhibition of Nellie Mae Rowe’s work. While I have shared some impressions, I found Nellie herself to be more compelling to think about, and to write about, so I’ve taken liberties to include some of those impressions too.
There is so much to admire about her – especially the way she crafted her life in just the way she wanted to live it. And in doing so, the barriers that would have normally limited her success – being a woman, an artist, black, and older – she instead, moved right through them, inviting anyone and everyone into her home to experience her Playhouse. Imagine this kind of generous invitation now, much less in the 70s.
Nellie Mae Rowe was a constant curator living in her greatest work of art. The ever-evolving Playhouse environment was a major source of energy and motivation where she was able to express her thoughts to her own satisfaction, all the while sharing her creations with others, inviting them into her world where hundreds of curious strangers were moved and inspired.
Green Horse, 1980, crayon, pastel, and graphite on paper. Recently sold at Christies from the property of the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, Mount Kisko, New York.About the author
Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is an independent curator and regional art consultant living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window Project and was selected for an ArtsUp Grant by Creative Pinellas as creator and curator of the 2019 summer exhibition Tongue & Groove.
Lee Miller is a fascinating figure in the history of photography, and it is refreshing to experience a retrospective of her work of this size and scope, more than 130 images spanning her decades-long career. The Woman who Broke Boundaries was curated by Dr. William Jeffett, chief curator of exhibitions at The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, with all photographs on loan from the Lee Miller Archives in Sussex, England, managed by her son Antony Penrose.
Miller’s career, and her photographic archive, represents her ceaseless drive to see, express, and experience. Her place in the industry and its history seems almost fated. Yet Miller’s insatiable ambition to become an important photographer and writer is sometimes downplayed in favor of telling the stories of her relationships to several key figures who Miller encountered along the way.
The exhibition’s organization is informed by The Lives of Lee Miller a biography that her son Antony Penrose wrote. However, since the first introduction visitors get to the exhibit’s thesis is “This exhibition tells the story of Lee Miller’s extraordinary and unconventional life as seen through her photographic portraits of others” it is within this framework that viewers are meant to situate what they learn of Miller—through her portraits of and relationships with others. The exhibition, however, does not address many of the tragedies of Miller’s early life and simplifies key relationships that were more complex than they seem.
The exhibition begins with a large didactic panel situating Miller as Artist, War Correspondent, Model & Muse. Miller modeled for Vanity Fair and Vogue in her late teens and early 20s and was vaunted as the pinnacle of beauty standards of the 1920s. This was how she met Edward Steichen, an absolute giant in the field of both artistic and commercial photography who would later become a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.
Miller was in front of, rather than behind, the camera during this period of her career, therefore this part of her life is not detailed much in the exhibition. Nevertheless, it represents the sum of numerous formative moments since Steichen wrote her a letter of introduction and recommendation to work with Man Ray, the American surrealist artist living in Paris.
Surrealist aims of accessing unconscious creativity, desires, and expression have a natural affinity with the medium of photography. Photography captures fractions of a moment that the eye and the brain experience very differently than what the camera captures. A photo represents a different plane of reality. Additionally, photography’s formal characteristics allow for techniques like cameraless image creation (photograms), double exposures, combination printing, and any other number of manipulations that distort the “reality” that photography represented for many.
Since surrealism as an art movement (including writers, poets, painters, and photographers, and other creators in all sorts of media) was preoccupied with Freudian psychology, women in the group may have had a challenge being taken seriously as creators and were more often treated as Muses—passive inspiration for the creators. Or at least that is how it’s been reported in the photo history books.
Miller’s relationship with Man Ray is well documented and marks the introduction to her photographic work proper in The Woman Who Broke Boundaries. This critical part of her photographic career also has scant representation in the exhibition. Though she was a model for Man Ray, Miller was far more than muse. They were technical and artistic collaborators. One of the surrealist photographic techniques that is synonymous with Man Ray’s legacy is that of solarization.
Solarised Portrait (thought to be Meret Oppenhiem), Paris, France, 1932 by Lee Miller (NC00585) (c) Lee Miller Archives England 2020. All Rights Reserved.
A negative, while in the process of being developed (so while it is still sensitive to light exposure) is exposed to a brief bright light. The result is a sort of otherworldly reversal of some tones in the final photograph—the highlights and shadows create an illusion of lighting that would be impossible to achieve without the manipulation. Sometimes the relationship between figure and background is lost and the model appears to be a relief carved from stone.
History books say Ray invented the technique, but Miller reports that it was something that happened while she was working alone in the darkroom. In The Lives of Lee Miller, she is quoted: “It was all very well my making that one accidental discovery, but then Man had to set about how to control it and make it come out exactly the way he wanted to each time.”
In the biography, Penrose suggests “Few examples of her early photographs survived her subsequent traveling and the strange contempt in which she held her own work.” However, just a few pages later Penrose writes, “A measure of Lee’s and Man Ray’s mutual respect was that neither of them was seriously concerned when their credits were wrongly ascribed” indicating that some of Miller’s work may have been attributed to Ray at the time, and in legacy.
Miller’s photographs in this portion of the exhibition are representative of her avant-garde approach to portraiture—for sitters who were up for it. Solarized portraits of socialites such as Dorothy Hill denote a desire for Miller’s unique combination of techniques developed while working with Ray and her own sense of what makes remarkable portraits.
This segment of the exhibition also showcases photographs of Miller’s friends, surrealist artists, and work she made in Egypt. The former grouping, Miller and friends, is a name-dropper’s paradise. With the pictures as proof of Miller’s intimate association with major artists, her own renown as an artist grew.
Her photographs from the period she lived in Egypt are among the most fascinating of the exhibition. It seems to have taken Miller a while to resuscitate her creativity after marrying and moving to Egypt, but the images she eventually produced defined her mature photographic style. When creatively unfettered and free to pursue her own vision, Miller’s style of surrealist photography creates a playful tension by highlighting odd juxtapositions of subject matter. Portrait of Space (1937), an image made in Al Bulwayeb, near Siwa, Egypt, demonstrates the way an everyday scene can become a record of a dream in Miller’s hands. A simple torn window screen becomes an aperture to an otherwise shrouded ambiguous landscape—is it desert or beach? An oddly hung mirror seems to reflect the blank wall behind the photographer, but it also looks like it is a portal into the sky. It is hard to look away from the image because it invites and rewards close looking.
Miller’s wartime photographs also demonstrate her style of surrealism-via-juxtaposition. The realities of life in London during the Blitz must have eclipsed the surrealist visions she experienced in the desert.
She remained on staff as a photographer for Vogue and in 1942 Miller became accredited as a war photographer giving her the right to travel with the US Army. When Miller left London for the mainland, she found that she thrived in the bedlam of war. She was present for the Liberation of Paris, for the horrific discoveries at Buchenwald and Dachau, and for the first entry to the Berghof with its secret mountain passages. Her dispatches to Vogue began to slow as the world tried to move on after the war. Eventually, Miller also moved on from photography, leaving it almost completely in her past by 1954.
Miller’s life was indeed extraordinary and unconventional, and she is a photographer who should be celebrated for the boundaries she broke. The pictures in the exhibition don’t always stand on their own to demonstrate how exceptional she was, which is why the didactic text in the galleries (essays and label text) is so important for interpretive context. This is where the exhibition’s theme either becomes clear or not.
In my subjective experience, the exhibition doesn’t achieve its goal which I’ll repeat here: “This exhibition tells the story of Lee Miller’s extraordinary and unconventional life as seen through her photographic portraits of others.” As a woman and an artist, I would not like my life simplified to the degree that Miller’s has been to suit this simultaneously too-wide and too-narrow theme.
The unspoken subtext of the exhibition, as I experienced it, seems to focus on Miller almost as connective tissue among the notable men she met along the way. Viewers may be spurred, as I was, to find out more about Miller’s life that’s hinted at between the lines of The Woman Who Broke Boundaries. In the exhibition writing there is a lot about Miller’s extraordinary life and trailblazing career that is glossed over, euphemized, or just plain omitted.
What is evident from the work in this exhibition is that Miller was a master photographer, technician, and storyteller who created meaningful portraits and documents of her age with equal prowess. The opportunity to see such a range of photographs from an artist of Miller’s stature is not to be missed.
The Woman who Broke Boundaries: Photographer Lee Miller is on view exclusively at The Dalí Museum in St. Peterburg, Florida, through Jan. 2, 2022.
Bay Art Files contributor Sabrina Hughes holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of South Florida with a focus on the History of Photography. Hughes has worked at the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and is an adjunct instructor at USF and is the founder and principal of photoxo, a personal archiving service specializing in helping people preserve their family photos. She has an ongoing curatorial project, Picurious, which invests abandoned slides with new life. Follow her on Instagram @sabrinahughes for selfies, hiking, and dogs, and @thepicurious for vintage photos.
Installation shot of Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott with 1919 (1980) on the left. All photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.
Establishing the Sarasota Art Museum was a lengthy process that began back in 2003. After two years of speaking with community leaders in the arts and education sectors, the Sarasota Art Museum joined forces with Ringling College of Art + Design. Their decision? To transform the historic 1926 Sarasota High School into an art museumand education space. The school was originally designed by M. Leo Elliott but features a mid-century addendum created in 1959 by Paul Rudolph, an architect whose influence is still seen today in Sarasota. In 1996, classes officially moved to the current Sarasota High School, leaving the previous building abandoned for nearly 20 years. There were talks of demolishing the building until thirteen Sarasota volunteers, partnered with the Ringling College of Art + Design, petitioned for it to be transformed into an art museum.
The Sarasota School Board unanimously awarded them the building in 2004. From there, years of rigorous fundraising were required to begin renovations on the building. Over $22 million was raised by 2014. In 2015, they brought on Anne-Marie Russell to serve as founding executive director and chief curator, a position she held for six years. Russell oversaw the final renovations, the museum opening in December of 2019, as well as exhibitions and other programming through 2022. This includes Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott.
1919, 1980, Acrylic on Canvas.
The first painting in the Robert Colescott exhibition is the first thing on most of our minds lately: America. Regardless of one’s political position, it is difficult not to see events in our country over the past few years as anything other than grim, claustrophobic, and without clear resolution. 1919 (1980), Colescott’s painting of the continental United States of America, presents our massive and varied slab of land, still curiously bound together somehow, at least on a map. The rendering of this map is not bleak and dreary, however, but throbbing with vivid technicolor. Each state is granted its own color that is different from the surrounding states, emphasizing contrast. Some states are stamped with images symbolic of their culture: an alligator in Florida, a bottle of wine in California, an ox skeleton in Nevada, charmingly rendered. The map is flanked by two figures in profile who are only visible from the chest up. The rest of their bodies are submerged in a billowy mass of cotton-candy clouds, sprinkled with “studio sweepings” like cigarette butts and opened cans. The figure on the left is a white woman, hilariously buxom, and the figure on the right is a Black man in uniform. Evidently, these are the artist’s parents, who are also symbolized in the bird’s nest image in the center of the painting.
There are a lot of tropes here: 19th-century silhouettes in the figures in profile, state symbols on children’s maps, the “melting pot” of America formed by distinct cultures, and the latent but potent tension between Black men and white women in our country. 1919 certainly taps into the unsightly race relations that helped form and maintain the U.S. but it’s with a light touch. As the exhibition progresses, Colescott becomes increasingly direct about his positions regarding race, the history of painting, and American popular culture. This cocktail of uncomfortable social commentary, crude figuration, and a lush color palette is Colescott’s modus operandi. Like Paul Mooney and Robert Crumb, Colescott aims for the status of great comedy by presenting these blunt and jagged truths with a sense of levity and even glee. Essentially, he’s his own straight man and funny man; Laurel and Hardy in one painterly package.
Installation shot of the artist’s early work.
It took a while to get there, however, and the exhibition traces Colescott’s history succinctly. Born in 1925, Colescott doesn’t develop his signature style until the 1970’s when he was well into his forties. This is peculiarly late for an artist to “find their voice,” particularly when individual styles were so prized in the mid-20th century. A room in the exhibition dedicated to Colescott’s early work presents a serious student of art history, from Manet to Matisse to Léger (a teacher of Colescott’s). These paintings are mostly executions of the styles of other artists, if not copying specific artworks altogether. One exception is a small painting, Untitled (1949), made while Colescott was a graduate student at UC, Berkeley. It’s a small work of geometric abstraction that is an early cue of Colescott’s later strategies for organizing compositions and his affinity for pink. The rest of the work documents Colescott’s attempt to find his point of view through other artists. Fake it ‘til you make it. All artists go through this, but Colescott’s lengthy growing pains risked him becoming a permanent student of art history: a practitioner of the values of others instead of synthesizing his own.
That all changes after an extended stay in Egypt beginning in 1964 where Colescott became the first artist-in-residence at the American Research Center in Cairo. It’s always a little slippery to deduce clear cause-and-effect from an artist’s life to their work, but with Colescott, it’s pretty case-closed. There is a dramatic shift in formal concerns and sensibility that result from Colescott’s five-year stint in Egypt. The paintings become larger, the colors more saturated and delicious, and the figures less realistic yet full of life somehow. Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1968) is an early example. This is the beginning of the “cartoonish” style for which Colescott is remembered. Something about Egypt awakened his childhood love of color and comic strips (I suspect Egyptian hieroglyphics and ornate linen are to credit). It’s apt that Pop Art and psychedelia were occurring simultaneously in the States and the UK while Colescott was in Egypt. The social revolution of the 1960s was also brewing, exploding into the Civil Rights Movement in America and Second Wave Feminism in the west writ large.
Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, 1968, Acrylic on Canvas.
This leads to another clear awakening for Colescott in Egypt: race. It seems that moving from the Pacific Northwest to Cairo forced Colescott to confront, accept, and celebrate his own bi-racialism. This, paired with his beatnik influence after moving to Oakland in 1969, focused Colescott to present these issues with a crass, cheeky sense of humor and almost hallucinogenic imagery. Sprinkle in some appropriation from art history and American popular culture, along with the occasional flashes of self-reflection and autobiography (see Bad Habits from 1983), and voila: you’ve got an artwork by Robert Colescott.
Colescott is extraordinarily productive once he finds his groove. The exhibition is replete with examples of Colescott keeping his basic ingredients but playing with the proportions. Cactus Jack in El Dorado (1977) amps up the transparent use of stereotypes, in images and text, but dials back the viscous painting style for which Colescott is best known. The painting’s crisp colors and flat rendering narrow the attention to Colescott’s matter-of-fact delivery of stereotypes, inducing an appropriate discomfort. Even the scenery is a stereotype of the American landscape and desire to head west.
Detail of Cactus Jack in El Dorado, 1977, Acrylic on Canvas.
Hard Hats (1987), by contrast, relishes in cloddish, lumpy figures but doesn’t reduce them to signs or stereotypes. Instead, Colescott presents a rather intimate scene of solidarity between a wife and her husband, a construction worker and his coworkers, Americans and their fellow citizens. “We’re all building this together.” While the comradery is definitely visible, so is the looming fear of collapse. Hence, the hardhats. When is this whole thing going to tumble?
Some paintings eschew any immediate story altogether. Sleeping Beauty (2002), a large diptych centrally mounted in the exhibition, appears more interested in marks rather than images. Reduced and swift, the marks made on the canvas tempt the viewer to decipher any specific reference but are ultimately illegible. The painting has a sweeping sense of time that is enhanced by its large scale. It invokes the history of recording touch, from cave paintings to Abstract Expressionism, but isn’t particularly located in the specific project of America that concerns the rest of his work.
These paintings, however, are examples of Colescott’s deep cuts. They meander slightly from his primary “one-two punch” strategy: presenting the audience with cherished imagery and symbolism that connects them to their childhoods and rosy-eyed views of America, then immediately injecting the garish, foul costs of that imagery without any clear path towards reconciliation. They get the sweet and the bitter.
Shirley Temple Black and Bill Robinson White, 1980, Acrylic on Canvas.
Or at least, that’s the goal. This “one-two punch” often consists of injecting Black figures into scenes in which they weren’t originally visible, like Rubens or Lichtenstein paintings. Sometimes Colescott is even more upfront by portraying white figures as Black and vice-versa. Shirley Temple Black and Bill Robinson White (1980) is an example. Here, the famed actor/tap dancer ambles through a garden with the iconic child star of the 1930s. It could easily be a scene from one of the several movies they made together except that 1) the scene is in color and 2) their races are switched. Colecott’s intense color palette, drenched in saturation, amplifies the feeling of disorientation. The figures, however, are some of Colescott’s most realistically rendered. The result is a painting that is acutely abnormal. Besides the disarming switch of the figures’ races, the friction between the cartoonish colors (the background sunset looks like something straight out of The Simpsons) and the more focused realism of the figures confuses fantasy and reality. Don’t movies do this, too? There’s got to be a Wizard of Oz joke deep in this painting; the double entendre of switching from black and white to color when Dorothy arrives in Oz. The painting contains a remarkable stillness, as if frozen in suspended animation. A tonal remix occurs, too. Robinson’s laughter reads more like horror and Temple’s luminous enthusiasm comes off more withholding and cautious.
Left: Bad Habits, 1983, Acrylic on Canvas. Right: The Judgement of Paris, 1984, Acrylic on Canvas
They aren’t all hits, however. The Judgement of Paris (1984) uses the same “one-two punch” but just comes off rushed. Colescott had a fine line to walk: how to employ clear strategies of appropriation but not become utterly formulaic. The Judgement of Paris wears its formula on its sleeve: steal a title and composition from a canonized painter, usually a white male, and make one or all the figures Black! That’s a fine place to start, but The Judgement of Paris doesn’t really go anywhere with it. It doesn’t transcend this formula. The paintings have to offer more than the sum of their parts, and with Colescott they usually do. If not, the humor flattens, the point is cheapened, Colescott’s hard-earned voice is lost, and the painting quickly sums itself up. Yawn.
However, the final room that contains The Judgement of Paris does present other work that successfully complicates Colescott’s practice. Colescott’s signature oeuvre relies on this “one-two punch” that the viewer, ironically, is continuously hit over the head with throughout the exhibition. The idea being that Colescott shows us what these symbols from history books, Disney movies, and magazine advertisements really mean. He, the insightful artist and enfant terrible, reveals the truth of our complicity to us. Without him, perhaps we’d be lost in our personal fantasies and delusions of grandeur; fantasies in which we’re the heroes, of course. That’s fine, but it’s just fine. The show becomes richer when Colescott points that outward perception a little closer to home, making tidy, moral judgments tougher to deliver. After all, it is his work that relies quite heavily on stereotypes, on appropriating charged imagery that already exists only to alter it slightly, if at all.
Lone Wolf Trilogy (Strutting his Stuff, Checking It Out, Yes Virginia), 1976, Graphite on Paper.
Perhaps Colescott never completely developed his own unique strategy for creating images outright. Whether it’s through Rubens or Shirley Temple, Colescott almost always needs a pre-existing vehicle through which to express his ideas and attitude. A series of drawings called Lone Wolf Trilogy (1974) makes this compromise well. Colescott steals the stereotype of a dapper, randy wolf, originally made popular by famed animator Tex Avery. With a lengthy and lascivious grin, the wolf is always standing confidently, puffing on a cigar (shout out to Freud), and dressed to the nines. In case it wasn’t already clear what the wolf is hungry for, Colescott draws an obvious dick print in the wolf’s pants. His legs spread wide exacerbate his intentions: he’s ready to deliver.
Lone Wolf in Paris, 1977, Acrylic on Canvas.
Colescott uses one of these drawings as a template for the painting Lone Wolf in Paris (1977). Here, the wolf is dancing with a blonde woman at a restaurant. Orbs of light (spotlights?) focus on the couple as the wolf dips the woman, an iconic and erotic position in salsa dancing. His once obvious erection is obscured the bent body of the woman, but sexual symbols linger. What else could those stiff candles, slowly dripping milky wax, be there for? The shadow underneath the dancers, an amalgam of intertwined forms, predicts more shapes and contortions that the dancers will take on later when they find someplace a little more private.
Of course, the wolf is Robert Colescott. Whether it’s how he saw himself, or how he wished he did, or both, who knows. Regardless, what’s successful about these drawings and the resulting painting is their sharp humor and lack of judgment. Colescott understands the pleasure of being a horndog and the resulting complications of it. It’s possible that the work in this room reveals Colescott to be even more reflective. What if stereotypes are often unfair representations with real consequences and pleasurable to slap onto others? If one needs a clear takeaway or lesson from an art exhibition (I don’t), this one offers a useful quandary: how do we attempt to make a better world for each other, whatever that means, while accepting our innate appetites to segregate and flatten each other into caricatures? What if America isn’t as pretty and fluffy as we’re sometimes told it is, but that’s because we aren’t either and never will be? Not in some high-minded, academic way, but in our tedious, daily negotiations with our egos and various thirsts?
In a culture where image management is high currency and many people, perhaps artists most egregiously, are constantly manicuring their morality on “the public stage” like a bird preens its plumage, Robert Colescott reminds us that manicures only go so far. In fact, they could even be detrimental in their disguising of the malformed and grisly impulses that run through all of us. Like all good art, Colescott’s work provides an opportunity for integration: to work on a better, more equitable world for all while acknowledging the quiet rumble in our bellies at the cheap pain of others; our animal eyes glowing in the dark.
Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, Raphaela Platow, and Matthew Weseley, was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. The traveling exhibition is on view at the Sarasota Art Museumthrough October 31, 2021. For additional information and related programming, visit the museum’s website.
Bay Art Files contributor Jonathan Talit is an artist currently based in central Florida. He received his BFA from Boston University and recently received his MFA from the University of South Florida, Tampa. He makes sculptures, essays, exhibitions, friends, fun, and occasionally money.
From Margins to Mainstays: Highlights from the Photography Collection is a small but impactful survey exhibition highlighting the work of photographers who may have experienced marginalization in their life because of part of their identity. The photos included are largely from the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg’s impressive photography collection, with a few important loans from area collectors.
The title From Margins to Mainstays refers to artists (and in many cases, portrait subjects) whose identity existed on the margins of social norms. Making visible the work of photographers who were queer, BIPOC, women, and often multiple intersections of marginalized identities is the exhibition’s theme. I’ve been immersed in the history of photography for more than a decade and I still learned a lot from this exhibition.
Richard Avedon (American, 1923–2004) Marian Anderson (Contralto, New York, June 30, 1955), 1955, Gelatin silver print, NEA photography purchase grant. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg.
A number of the artists included are queer, and that part of their identity was often hidden—either by themselves, such as Richard Avedon and Minor White who kept their queerness private during their lives, or just typically excluded from the general discourse around certain photographers and their work.
While the exhibition’s focus is on revealing the axis of discrimination faced by photographers or other artists (with the subtext that this did not keep them from finding professional success) in many cases there is a concomitant axis of privilege that helped them become Mainstays.
Julia Margaret Cameron is one example. While it’s true that women photographers were a relative minority in Victorian England, Julia Margaret Cameron was far from an average woman. She had an extremely rarified friend and portrait model group that included Robert Browning, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose portrait as The Dirty Monk, is included in From Margins to Mainstays.
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815–1879) The Dirty Monk, 1865, Albumen print. Note: The print on display in the exhibition is on loan to the MFA, St. Peterburg from a private collection. This albumen print, similar to the one on display, was sourced online and is provided courtesy of the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, United Kingdom.
Cameron wasn’t a woman of average means or connections, so it’s hard to think of her for a stand-in for an average woman in the mid-19th century. Cameron had the means and resources to pursue copyrighting, marketing, exhibiting, and publishing her photographs. During her lifetime, she sold eighty prints to the Victoria and Albert Museum and entered a relationship with an established London print seller to publish and sell her photographs. This speaks to Cameron’s social connections and that assisted her career and legacy. Were there barriers to women photographers in the 1860s that couldn’t be overcome by wealth or connections?
Studying art history, one learns quickly that social connections are disproportionately what determined who eventually got included in the history books when they were written. Yet, it has sparked in me curiosity about some of these photographers’ personal lives.
Another example is Berenice Abbott. I studied her tangentially and momentarily because of her friendship with Eugene Atget, who I researched for a prolonged period. Berenice Abbott was studio assistant to Surrealist Man Ray in Paris in the 1920s, which is how she befriended Atget (Man Ray collected Atget’s photographs).
From the exhibition, I learned Abbott was an out lesbian! Personally, I cannot wait to learn more about this part of her life. It’s sparked for me a renewed interest about her time in 1920’s Paris and I’m glad to know that she likely did not spend all of her free social time with the group of Surrealists that she worked with!
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898–1991), New York at Night, 1932, Gelatin silver print, Museum purchase with funds provided by the NEA and FACF. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg.
Abbott made a name for herself as a photographer in the mid-to-late 1930s for her wide-ranging project Changing New York, funded by the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Her photograph in the exhibition, New York at Night (1932), is a dreamlike view from atop a skyscraper, looking down on other buildings and the twinkling lights of the city.
Abbott’s contribution to photography history was likely solidified before Changing New York because she facilitated the acquisition of thousands of Atget’s prints and negatives which eventually became a donation to the Museum of Modern Art and a landmark exhibition and production of scholarship decades later in the 1980s.
From Margins to Mainstays relies on the text to help viewers to make the connections between the exhibition theme and the images. In other words, with a few exceptions, the images themselves don’t communicate marginalization.
Minor White (American, 1908-1976), Ritual Branch, Frost on Window, 1958, Silver gelatin print, Gift of the photographer. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg.
These very minor critiques of a diverse and thoughtful exhibition come from my closeness to the subject matter. I had to purposely turn the volume down on my internal photography historian’s commentary, only because it’s hard to think of some of the artists included as being on the margins when they have become such giants in the field. However, that, I suppose, is the strength of the exhibition. Simply expanding our knowledge about photographers we think we know because they are in the survey textbooks always generates new understanding in the present.
From Margins to Mainstays: Highlights from the Photography Collection was organized by MFA St. Petersburg Curator of Photography Allison Moore, Ph.D., and will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg through September 26, 2021. For additional information and related programming visit the Museum’s website.
Bay Art Files contributor Sabrina Hughes holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of South Floridawith a focus on the History of Photography. Hughes has worked at the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and is an adjunct instructor at USF and is the founder and principal of photoxo, a personal archiving service specializing in helping people preserve their family photos. She has an ongoing curatorial project, Picurious, which invests abandoned slides with new life. Follow her on Instagram @sabrinahughes for selfies, hiking, and dogs, and @thepicurious for vintage photos.
Before venturing to Nashville, there was a road trip to Durham, North Carolina, for my first 21c experience. Currently, there are nine 21c Museum Hotels, with plans for more, sprinkled across a few select states in mostly mid-sized cities. Each location exhibits museum-quality 21st-century art (21c) in a restored historic building, converted to a boutique hotel that always includes an inventive lively restaurant and bar. Durham was the closest 21c within driving distance of St. Petersburg and was offering a 2-for-1-night stay, so last August – mid-pandemic – I hit the road.
Upon arrival at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham, I was crushed to learn the restaurant space Counting House was still closed, although not surprised given the pandemic restrictions at that time. I could see through the expansive windows that, like the hotel, the restaurant was teeming with compelling artwork. The skeleton crew eventually allowed me to wander the large multi-room restaurant to view and photograph the art. In the center of the bar area, I was delighted to see Duke Riley’s work, as I had met him during a University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USF/CAM) artist talk related to a series of woodcut editions he had completed at USF‘s Graphicstudio.
The main exhibit, The Future is Female, was installed throughout the museum portion of the hotel. It was excellent. I loved seeing works by many favorite artists (Carry Mae Weems, Deborah Roberts, Marilyn Minter, Mickalene Thomas) – and again, was delighted to be alone with the work since only hotel guests were granted museum access at the time.
What was an initial grave disappointment – regarding access – turned out to be a private ocean of time and space. During most of my wanderings, I was the only person around which felt illicit and delicious. I couldn’t believe my strange fortune.
21c Museum Hotel Durham’s Counting House bar and restaurant, August 2020. (Center triptych by Brooklyn-based Duke Riley)Details of Duke Riley’s It Will Warm You Twice, 2015, Cigarettes on wood panels.
21c Museum Hotel Nashville Lobby
The wood carved figure of a woman was in mid-air with no obvious support. She was floating just beyond the reception desk, an ethereal greeter.
“She is suspended. Do you know how?” asked Brian, from behind the front desk. He was only too eager to tell me yet I wanted to see for myself.
Her only anchor was a hand-held leash that led to the head of a puma, bearing sharp teeth, whose beautiful fur skin was splayed out on the floor like a rug. As gorgeous as the fur of this animal was, my first instinct was to look away.
I am an easily overwhelmed visual sponge, not able to immediately compartmentalize, so the impact of this piece was, initially, too much to take in. Not until the third day did I examine what the artist Marc Fromm had created. I assumed it to be a complicated piece to produce, yet conveyed complete success in presentation. Seamlessly accomplished. Now I could look at the piece with sincere disbelief, rather than discomfort, although the discomfort remained beneath the surface. (I won’t spoil the technical magic – see image and resource links.)
The placement of Young lady with pet, as impressive and impactful as it was, would seem better served in a spacious, isolated corner rather than in the midst of a busy hotel lobby. Perhaps its arresting presence is precisely why it was chosen for the entry area.
Note to readers: Please don’t expect a review or a critique of artwork mentioned in this article. My musings are written more like diary entries, recording impressions of selected pieces and trip experiences. I’ve provided a resource section at the end with links to additional information. Also, 21cMuseumHotels/Nashville.com provides an excellent 3d visual tour of featured artwork complete with recorded content per exhibit area.
Marc Fromm, Young lady with pet, 2010, basswood, puma, oil resin color, steel. This is a screen shot from 21cNashville.com virtual tour.
Young lady with pet set the stage for many other impactful figures I would soon encounter as I processed the powerful Fragile Figures exhibition.
Per the exhibit brochure: “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time…illuminates the range and complexity of human emotions, revealing intersections between vulnerability and power – social, cultural, and political – in contemporary portraiture. Individual and group identity, and the forces that shape how we see self and others, are approached through direct references to noted works from art history, connecting past events to current issues.”
Fragile Figures is beautifully curated by the 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, and is visually, emotionally and intellectually compelling – and certainly relevant. It is also a heavy and loaded exhibit sharing stunning, controversial, chilling, and sometimes heart-breaking work by artists from the vast contemporary art collection of the 21c founders, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson,of Louisville, Kentucky, where the original 21c Museum Hotel opened in 2006.
Fragile Figures in Nashville spanned three floors and meandered into several hallways and smaller rooms. It felt huge and daunting so I had to tackle it in smaller doses. Just when I thought I had seen the most impactful piece, there would be another mind-blower around the corner. Many of the pieces and installations resonated strongly with me and I found I needed to pace myself so I decided to focus on a few favorites rather than write about the whole exhibit.
After a full afternoon of digesting the work on a first walk-through, I was spent, and more than ready for a cocktail at Gray & Dudley, the in-house bar and restaurant. To my delight, all the specialty drink titles were Moira Rose (of Schitt’s Creek fame) inspired. I was torn between “The crows have eyes” or “David! Stop acting like a disgruntled pelican!” but instead ordered, “Where is Bebe’s chamber?” – nary a bad choice. To top that off, I ordered seared catfish, with creamy southern grits, to happily devour in my room where Ted Lasso was awaiting (a beloved Jason Sudeikis comedy).
Foreboding Figures
The series of dark and striking figures by Mohau Modisakeng were my favorite pieces in the exhibit. Their stark, large-scale shadowy beauty drew me into the end of a long hallway. Soon I was surrounded by these larger than life foreboding figures holding weapons. The hallway was not wide so I started to feel a bit claustrophobic. Usually, I would want to see pieces of this scale out in the open, with space around each of them, but in the crowded hallway their menacing impact was condensed and eerily palpable.
Below are a few of the images I took. Because of the glass and the lighting proximity, reflections of other warriors loomed in the background. Their multiplying presence was haunting enough – add to that, this strange faint music from down the hall and I decided to call it a day.
Mohau Modisakeng, Large-scale photography, from the Dikubo series.
Intrigued by this artist and his influences, I found an informative write-up by Joe Nolan, in White Hot Magazine (December 2020), who shared the following:
Mohau Modisakeng’s massive self-portraits are formally beautiful works of black-and-white photography. The deep blacks of the South African artist’s skin, garments and accessories are printed on glowing white watercolor paper, creating a dramatic contrast between the images of the artist and their backgrounds.
Modisakeng’s childhood in Soweto was marked by the oppressive violence of the last days of South Africa’s Apartheid-era – a life and death contrast between black and white. The artist’s photos examine violence, the instruments of violence, and the effects they leave on the bodies and psychologies of those affected by them. In a suite of images Modisakeng is armed with machete-like blades and cattle prods, and draped in a long black robe – the garment recalls traditional robes of African tribes as well as the garb of the Western legal and religious classes. Most striking is his donning of fedora hats over the kind of leather blinders you’d normally strap to a horse’s head. The blinders nod to the willful ignorance required to sustain a violent racist regime. The hat speaks to the gullibility and complicity of the educated, professional class which is most vulnerable to propaganda, and who benefit from maintaining an oppressive status quo.
Jane’s Hideaway
My sister Jane joined me for one night and we stumbled on a charming low-key little place a block from 21c – ironically called Jane’s Hideaway. We wandered in for a drink and headed toward a long bar in the back. As it turned out, the bartender (James) did indeed make a good Old Fashioned so we got comfortable and enjoyed the rotation of performers, especially Sierra Ferrell, who was completely outstanding (look her up).
We ordered another round, along with braised pork belly (I mean, please) and THE best Brussel spouts I’ve ever had, fried, with some sort of slightly sweet glaze. For a non-vegetable fan, this is high praise. It was great fun hanging with my awesome sister and happening upon this gem of a place.
Looking south on Broadway, which is a major entertainment district renowned for dive bars and live country music. Nashville-based singer and songwriter Sierra Ferrell (as shared on the site WallpaperFlare.com).
Head Hunter
Two photographs stayed with me as I meandered through the exhibit. I kept thinking about connections to the work of Tampa Bay photographer Selina Roman, who often photographs figures without showing faces. Sometimes her subjects are in masks or costumes, or maybe they are turned away from the camera or wrapped in fabric or material.
The first connection occurred when I came upon a Nan Goldin image of a figure, back to camera, wrapped in sheer material, standing in front of a drape-drawn window. Simon Silhouetted in the Window, Suite 22, NYC was installed in an upper floor hallway, among a few other stand-alone photographs. The wall text excerpt reads: “Nan Goldin began taking snapshot-like photographs of her lovers and friends in New York City in the mid-1970’s, which evolved into a groundbreaking project called “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency…”
The second connection was a day later, when I discovered a relatively hidden image, Head Hunter, by Denise Grunstein, installed high up on the other side of the reception area. It was a head and shoulders profile of a red-haired figure with hair wrapping around so the face wasn’t visible. The background was a solid vivid blue and the only other feature in the photo was an antiquated-looking metal contraption, making light contact, appearing like it could clamp or hold a head.
The above snapshots were taken in the exhibit space but because of their particular location and glare, they were difficult to capture clearly. Denise Grunstein, left; Nan Goldin, right.
I was glad that Head Hunter was in the vicinity of Marc Fromm’s Young lady with pet, given their shared metal elements – a steel leash leading to the toothy head of a puma and the metal head holder – each attached to an isolated figure. What could be a vulnerable, or even dangerous situation for either figure, given the strong-looking hardware that could cause pain or could lead to pain (puma) – doesn’t read that way. Neither the wood figure, nor the hair-covered head conveys fear – at least not to me.
The Head Hunter wall text read: “…Set against an expansive azure sky, the profile, whose features are obscured by gleaming red tresses, suggests a fetishistic fascination with hair, which has long been associated with feminine beauty and fecundity. The saturated sky surrounding the bodiless head, held stable by a centuries-old hairdressing tool, emphasizes the cinematic and the surreal in this at once seductive and unsettling vision.”
A screen shot from the Fragile Figures virtual museum tour; circles mark the online audio options. In the foreground, Marc Fromm’s Young lady with pet on the left; on the right, Denise Gundstein’s Head Hunter.
Matador Lady Killer
A show-stopping piece by Anastasia Schipani, Matador Lady Killer – is a rich, multi-layered, hand-sewn tapestry, twenty-six feet wide, created over a seven-year period as Schipani was processing the murder of her beloved.
Anastasia Schipani, Matador Lady Killer, 2014, Tapestry cloth, thread.
On her website, Schipani shares: “While living in Bangkok, my Thai lover was killed by a hit man. This personal tragedy created a before and after in my life and work. While recovering, back in the States, I worked in a Spanish nightclub whose walls were decorated with vintage bullfight posters. My consciousness forged a link between the brutal public spectacle of the bullfight and the cruel loss of my lover’s life…”
The piece is full of beautiful little story scenarios and connections. Many details when examined closely share some kind of tension or contradiction – lovely little fish surrounded by pointy sharks; plump birds too near a coiled snake; a smiling pin-up-style beauty under a jewel-laden tree, in proximity to a headless strong male body. The entire presentation is overwhelming in its vivid, technicolor hues toggling a tightrope between danger and bliss, good and evil, gleeful happiness and horrific tragedy.
It seemed inappropriate that the view of this expansive and stunning tapestry was visually interrupted by one of the life-sized 21c signature penguins (deep turquoise is Nashville’s assigned color). Sometimes blocked sightlines are unavoidable due to space constraints but this was not the case here, the tapestry was in the largest gallery, and the penguin could have easily served its branding role in a number of other places.
There are huddles of same-colored penguins for each 21c location and they are known to be on the move, sharing hospitality, showing up in unexpected places throughout the properties.
Site Specific
I’ve only been to two of the nine 21c Museum Hotels but in both of these locations, there was use of existing building traits in unique ways. In Durham, the building is a former bank with a large walk-in vault in the basement that was cleverly incorporated into an installation.
In Nashville, there was a one-off lower street-level window near the corner that had an interior shelf-like sill with an odd collection of random things (i.e. yellow cone, small plastic unicorn toy, orange ball). Since I passed it coming and going often, it fascinated me every time. I found it hard to photograph between the dirty outside window and the dusty inside surface, as though Boo Radley emptied his pockets and left his collected treasures undisturbed.
21c Museum Hotel Nashville’s window of curiosity. The basement vault at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham.
I was continuously curious about this quirky little find and enjoyed making up stories about who would put together a collection like that. Wait. I know who – Tampa Bay area artist Ry McCullough! Coincidentally, McCullough has a current exhibit of objects showing in Gallery114 on the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College. [Read the recent BAF article by Tony Palms]
Top: 21c Nashville’s window of curiosity; Bottom, detail from Tampa-based Ry McCullough’s Themes for the American Kestrel currently on display at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa.
Elevate
The hotel’s website reveals: “Elevate at 21c” presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Those I observed were installed in the immediate elevator area per floor, and my favorite was by Nashville-based Duncan McDaniel seen below.
Duncan McDaniel, Across the Clouds, 2018, Various metals, acrylic and LED lighting. Screen shot from 21cNashville.com website.
As I was watching the color tones slowly move into different shades, I thought of the recent Lights On Tampa public art installation by Erwin Redl, Circles Unity, a series of synchronized LED color-changing circles lining the darkened underpass of the Tampa Convention Center along Channelside Drive.
Erwin Redl, Circles Unity, 2021. Light installation with 31 ring-shaped programable RGBW LED-fixtures and circular white reflective disks. Commissioned for Lights on Tampa by the City of Tampa. Partial installation view courtesy of the LightsOnTampa.org website.
I greatly appreciate the 21c Museum Hotel’s long-standingcommitment to supporting artists at all levels of their careers. Through purchasing and collecting works, to exhibiting and promoting works, these effective philanthropists provide artists multiple ways to gain experience and exposure – not to mention being included in an important collection of contemporary art.
The 21c Museum Hotel concept integrates threeimportant elements that will always get my attention – historic building preservation, high-quality contemporary art, and delicious hospitality. What an intoxicating trifecta!
About the author
Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is an independent curator and regional art consultant living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window Project and was selected for an ArtsUp Grant by Creative Pinellas as creator and curator of the 2019 summer exhibition Tongue & Groove.
Ry McCullough’s Themes for the American Kestrel is on view at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa, Florida, through June 24, 2021. By appointment. Tampa-based artist and writer Tony Wong Palms provides observations about his visit to the gallery for Bay Art Files
– Give yourself over to floating, even a little bit.
“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery…”
In late February 2020, a colleague from the college where I teach asked me how I felt about the virus as it raged in China but had yet to get a foothold stateside. I shrugged my shoulders in response and indifferently said, “Hopefully it won’t come our way.” It seemed like something far off and abstract. “This is not our problem,” I thought.
Fast forward to now and a lot of us are fully vaccinated. We can go out, see family and friends, hug them, sit at a bar, or get on an airplane. It is hard to fathom that a year ago, we were in lockdown and unsure of what the future would bring in a pandemic. For many, our homes became our offices, movie theaters, coffee shops, and gyms. As we emerge from our collective Covid-19 fog, one photographer, Rania Matar, gives us the chance to look back and see lockdown through her lens.
A mélange of faces fills a gallery at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, located in Winter Park, Florida. Framed by windows and doors, the people in Rania Matar: On Either Side of the Window, Portraits During Covid-19, defiantly take up space and confront viewers.
Photographs are by the author unless otherwise stated.
Like Diane Arbus and Alec Soth, Rania Matar’s portraits create a strong sense of intimacy not only between the artist and subject, but with the viewer as well. At the entrance to the show is an arresting image of a couple, Mia and Jun, Allston, Massachusetts. The couple greets visitors as soon as they enter the gallery. They stand behind a green door, Mia wearing bright red lipstick and red halter dress, and Jun wearing a red shirt. They are framed by the door of their forest green home, their hands pressed against the glass as if they are trapped. In a recent artist talk at the museum, Matar said the couple are dancers. This detail adds meaning to the expressions on the couples’ faces – a desire to move, to perform. On the flip side, however, a universal yearning to resume the lives we once knew.
Matar began the project last year shortly after lockdown. When residents of the northeast were emerging from winter and then just as the flowers were coming into bloom, they were ordered to stay home. She asked people on social media if they wanted their portraits made. As word got around, interest swelled and she crisscrossed the Boston area, landing in people’s yards and pointing her camera into their homes. Matar’s lockdown photo sessions came as a welcome respite from the barrage of new infections and deaths. Matar gave subjects the chance to perform, play dress up and connect with someone who was not part of their household. Taking in each image, it’s difficult not to reflect on one’s own lockdown experience.
Matar is known for her beautifully staged portraits. This body of work is no different. Every image in the show is loaded with beauty; however, the true excitement is the exhibition’s varying and undulating levels of intensity. Some images are serene and calming, while others are unsettling and tinged with anxiety.
Wendy and Timmy, Newton, Massachusetts, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
In the image Wendy and Timmy, Newton, Massachusetts, 2020, an older woman in a red shirt slightly leans outside the window of her red-brick home. She looks off-camera. In the shadows of her room stands what appears to be a masculine figure, his silhouette framed by a window opposite hers. Is the man her husband? Her son? A handyman? The shadows conceal any details. The composition reads like a scene from a thriller. According to Gisela Carbonell, Curator, the man’s appearance was not planned. However, his appearance adds the right amount of mysterious narrative to the image. Lockdown came in so many shapes and sizes – families, couples, people on their own. In Wendy and Timmy, the idea of being locked inside and how our limits might be tested, for better or for worse, comes into view.
Matar, as in her other bodies of work, possesses a keen sense of combining setting and figure and creating new layers of meaning, with each informing the other. In the Her series, she photographs young women around the world in not only picturesque places, but in heartbreaking ones, such as the rubble from last year’s devastating blast at the port in Beirut, Lebanon. In the pandemic series, the settings aren’t as dramatic but are still nonetheless captivating and compelling.
In a striking pair of photographs, proximity and the color red unite the subjects who look like they could be neighbors in the same building. In the first image, Cyrus, Brookline Massachusetts, 2020, a figure with closed eyes leans back, a smile on painted lips, the sunlight bathing their face and a sliver of the red blouse. The reflections of the trees and red flowers outside this window seem to exuberantly explode from the subject, framing them sublimely. In the second image, Marina, Brookline Massachusetts, 2020, a woman also in red, reclines in an open window, shadows dancing on the screen. She dons sunglasses, a short haircut and red lips, a la Liza Minelli. Her look screams Diva in the best way. The corners of each of the two images touch, seemingly connecting the subjects. Their proximity creates a dialogue, a human connection – of which so many of us needed at this time last year.
The color red permeates the exhibition, and I cannot help but think of all of the symbolic meanings this color has – love, passion, life, blood – and gives the exhibition its pulse.
A year later, we navigate the world in masks and face shields and seeing a stranger’s face seems like a novelty. None of Matar’s subjects don a mask, and nearly each subject’s face is visible. In many of the images the glass or the screen becomes the barrier between photographer and subject. The duality of the windows and their reflections become one of the most compelling devices in the series. The reflections serve different purposes such as abstraction or a sense of place. In one photograph, Diana and Chris, Watertown Massachusetts, 2020, two women stand together. They look related, sisters perhaps, similar age, short haircuts, and silver hair. Reflections on the window frames create a rhythmic and infinite labyrinth of lines, intersections, and corners – a reminder of how our own human relationships and networks ground to a halt.
In Matar’s images life and time march on in the face of a pandemic and isolation. Nowhere is that more evident than in the two portraits of Susan. In the first photograph, Susan, Salem Massachusetts, 2020, a woman brushes her long brown hair alone as she looks off-camera. What looks like late afternoon light falls on the woman revealing a swollen belly peeking out from her dress. We immediately realize she isn’t alone after all. In the next photograph, Susan, Raffy and baby Violette, Salem, Massachusetts, 2020, the woman holds a small breastfeeding infant while a man brushes the mother’s hair. As before, beautiful light falls on the woman creating an almost sublimely religious tableau. The pandemic was, and might still be, at our doorsteps – it felt like time was at a standstill, yet it is photographs like these that offer hope of a better day.
Matar reminds us that there is life and it’s worth the wait. The photographs are life-affirming and so is the exhibition. Rania Matar: On Either Side of the Window, Portraits During Covid-19 is on view until May 9, 2021 and a virtual walkthrough of the entire exhibition can be found here.
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, on the Winter Park campus of Rollins College, is the only teaching museum in the greater Orlando area. The collection ranges from antiquity through contemporary eras, including rare old master paintings and an in-depth collection of prints, drawings, and photographs. The museum displays temporary exhibitions on a rotating basis along with the permanent collection, and a satellite exhibition space for the Museum’s Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art is located at The Alfond Inn, which is within walking distance of the campus.
Tampa-based Selina Román received her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida in 2013. She has participated in residencies with the Visual Artists Network and Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator. Her work is in the collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota; the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs; Hillsborough Community College, as well as numerous private collections. She teaches visual art and photography courses at the University of Tampa and Hillsborough Community College in Tampa.
Pausing at the entrance, taking in what is in front of me, many things come to mind when walking into Gallery114@HCC at the School of Visual and Performing Arts on the Ybor City campus and encountering the works of Ry McCullough.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
There are three pedestals composed in the middle of the floor, each covered with little objects, some with oddly familiar shapes, like Claes Oldenburg’s monumental sculptures that more or less resemble everyday things, except these are in sizes that can easily fit inside a coat pocket; there’s a video showing the same stuff in a smaller, but ever-changing grouping, the setting like a photographer’s studio; there are framed mixed media works hung on the wall, each depicting a landscape with a scattering of these objects; and finally there’re two small shelves, each with a rectangular box made delicately from Japanese paper, sitting on a greenish felt, like architectural models of some basic structural forms.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
The pedestals could be an archipelago, a small group of islands with colored and differently shaped things that washed in from the sea, and the wind blew them around and around to end up where they are now, curios.
And taking a walk on these island shores, kicking around at your feet, these shaped and color things, maybe they are sea shells, or sand smoothed pebbles, perhaps pieces of coral, but most definitely flotsam and jetsam telling tales of their long transformative voyage through the ocean waves, when a glint of something catches your eye and you pick it up, examine it, drop it in your pocket, take it home, place it on a shelf, or window sill, or the end table, alongside all the other odds and ends that have been collected from here and there over the years, and now together they all are, in the same time and space, more or less coexisting, little islands in of themselves.
A friend comes and visits and they might admire your collection, picks one up, studies it, puts it back, but not quite the same spot or orientation; or maybe it’s cleaning day, and the objects are lifted one by one, dusted and put back, and again, not all returned to the exact same position. The arrangement thus shifts slightly, hardly noticeable, and continues shifting one cleaning day after another, one friend’s exploratory hands after another.
This constant picking up and putting back is essentially the 20 minutes long video piece. With the magic of video editing, pieces suddenly pop in and out of existence, creating a slightly different composition with each editing cut. One piece may go poof and reappear in a little while next to something else, or maybe never appear again. The viewer’s brow tense with concentrated anticipation. Did someone just get kidnapped, or is this an example of what physicists call entanglement? Who knew such unassuming objects appearing and disappearing could create such a drama. A suspenseful video performance where the artist is unseen.
The framed works on the wall is non-action action in a flat space. There’s a line, could be a table’s edge or the horizon, plane of the sky meets plane of the earth, but unlike the objects on the pedestals or in the video where they’re visibly grounded, the objects in these mixed media pieces feel suspended, while not as high as the floating bowler hat men in a René Magritte painting, they are not as affected by the gravity that anchors their pedestal counterparts.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
Within each frame is a vignette of possibilities. They are very precise and elegant, exuding a calm to the videos’ caprice. Its stillness belies conscious intentions and subtleties of movement, like a person in meditation, where meditation is a deliberate act, as in the long wave of the tsunami, its motion unseen, or unrecognized until it momentously meets the shore.
The exhibition is titled Themes for the American Kestrel. There’s a curious group of objects way up on one of the gallery’s architectural ledges, next to the title wall, with one of the objects resembling a bird, watching all that’s below. This little vignette does not have a title or exhibition label, nor is it acknowledged anywhere else, and being high above eye level, could be easily missed.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
Perhaps the zen like statement from the artist in the exhibition brochure may explain this apparition high on the ledge: “I sit and the bird arrives or the bird sits and I arrive, or not.”, or maybe it’s the meaning of the exhibition title, or both, or neither.
The exhibition brochure, designed like one of the framed wall works, is very handsome, includes a meaningful quote from Virginia Woolf, with the opening phrases: “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake….”
Following this is a brief artist statement outlining his ideas and intentions. Towards the end of the statement, McCullough references the artist Giorgio Morandi and his still-life paintings as a counterpoint to the evolving compositions in his video piece.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
Morandi (1890-1964) lived his whole life in Bologna, Italy, where for the last 40 or so years of his artistic practice he maintained a singular focus on regimented compositions of bottles, vases, and similarly shaped and size objects, painted with subtle hues and tone gradations. It is an ascetic discipline, like a monk repeating a mantra, like Sol LeWitt’s endless iterations of the skeletal cube. The subtlest of details and changes are noticed with potential significance, like when physicists discovering an elemental particle, or that tiny chili pepper altering the flavor makeup of an entire dish.
If Morandi’s 40 years could be compressed into a 20 minutes time-lapse video, the result might be something like McCullough’s own video performance. Of course, a time-lapse video skips over many moments and details. But what is 40 years or 20 minutes, barely a nanosecond within a razor-thin sliver of a rock layer tucked in a stratum of the earth’s crust in the expanse of geologic time.
The exhibition is open to the public by appointment through June 24, 2021. For additional information about the gallery visit the Galleries at HCC website.
Ry McCullough received his MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa in Tampa, FL.
From Chaos to Order: Greek Geometric Art from the Sol Rabin Collection
By Dr. Bob Bianchi
Some of us, I suppose, might initially be reluctant to attend an exhibition featuring 57 relatively small objects from the obscure Geometric period (about 900-700 BCE) of ancient Greek art placed within the context of ancient Greek epic poetry and philosophy. And, I would also imagine, others among us would suspect that reading labels and slugging our way through an accompanying catalogue would be of boringly little interest. We might even echo the sentiments of Callimachus, a Greek poet writing in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3rd century BCE, who once famously quipped, “A big book is even bigger pain!” But hang on for a second, because big things come in small packages!
The first is the sagacious selection of the objects by Dr. Michael Bennett, Senior Curator of Early Western Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, who curated this exhibition. He made the selection from the approximately 700 in the private collection of Mr. Sol Rabin, who has so exclusively focused for decades on acquiring works of art from that period that his collection is universally considered to be the finest of its kind.
Dancing Bull, Greek, (Olympia?), Eighth century BC, Bronze.
Helmeted Warrior, Greek, (Thessaly?), Late eighth century BC, Bronze.
Peacock, Greek, Eighth century BC, Bronze.
All from The Sol Rabin Collection (Peacock photo courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)
The second is the text, both in the labels and panels in the exhibition and in the catalogue itself. All were written by Dr. Bennett. His main essay represents a decades-long distillation of his own thoughts on the Geometric period. It is felicitously written and peppered with contemporary references so that it is a very easy read. He defines in very understandable terms the ancient Greek concept of beauty and the Greek definition of that term within the context of his overarching discussion of ordering chaos.
His syntheses of the so-called Presocratic philosophers, his elucidation of the principles of Pythagoras, his discussion of Plato’s famed “simile of the cave,” and his presentation of passages from Aristotle’s Metaphysics are presented in such a reader-friendly manner that the complex becomes simple. Interwoven within those discussions is the place of oral, epic poetry of both Hesiod and Homer, appropriate passages of which he quotes in English translation. Despite its simplicity of style, Dr. Bennett’s essay represents “a fundamental reappraisal of the birth of Greek art,” as the Museum’s Executive Director and CEO, Kristen A. Shepherd, so aptly states in her “Foreword.” I could not agree more.
A fully illustrated catalogue, written by Dr. Bennett, accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase online.
To begin with, the Geometric period was so labeled by modern scholars because of the Geometric patterns found on decorated vases of the period, two of which are featured in the exhibition. The repetitive patterns of their decoration are linked, correctly so, to the repetitive patterns found in the poetry of Homer. Those patterns, I might add, have been suggested to have been based on contemporary, now lost, textiles, ostensibly woven by women, as exemplified in The Odyssey, where Penelope holds her suitors at bay until she completes the weaving of a funerary shroud for Laertes. As an added bonus, visitors to this exhibition might also want to take in the concurrent exhibition, Color Riot! How Color Changed Navajo Textiles, in order to understand just how the repetition of geometric patterns are inherent in the technical mechanics of physical weaving a textile.
One must always remember that the population of the Geometric period of Greece was relatively small, major urban areas rarely containing more than an estimated 5,000 residents. Those residents were neither dominated by the worldwide web nor bombarded by posts on social media. It was an age dominated by oral, epic poetry, and with the exception of Hesiod, Homer was the only show in town. Consequently, the Geometric period of ancient Greek art can indeed be regarded as an age dominated by the epic poetry of Homer. That the poetry of Homer should so dominate an age should come as no surprise. More than 26% of all papyri containing literary texts recovered from the sands of Egypt during the Roman Imperial Period are Homeric! Dr. Bennett is certainly correct, then, in identifying the bronze statuette of a singer accompanying himself on a phorminxas Homer, because the ancient sources clearly state that Hesiod never learned how to play the cithera, the other stringed instrument of the day.
Dr. Bennett’s linking of certain passages from the epics of Homer with the subjects represented on the bronzes is compelling. His discussion of the role of lions in those epics is consistent with his interpretation of the bronze group of a lion attacking a man. The bronzesmith responsible for its creation may also have relied on the Greek artistic convention of portraying the “pregnant moment,” that is a point in the action just prior to its climax. The lion is about to fell its prey, but is not devouring it. The choice is comparable to the scene in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, wherein the protagonist resolves to blind himself, then exits so that the act is anticipated but not consummated on stage.
Man and Lion, Greek, 8th century BC, Bronze, The Sol Rabin Collection
And there are statuettes of horses, horses galore in this exhibition. Here again, Dr. Bennett is doubtless correct when he observes that this repetition of a type is not a mechanical, knee-jerk, simple replication, but represents a repetitive pursuit of perfection and clarity. To my mind, these horses are also evocative of passages in The Iliad (17, 474-8) where the goddess Hera grants one of Achilles’s horses the ability to speak and in so doing predicts the imminent death of his master; and the final lines of that same poem, “…and thus was their burial of Hector, prince of charioteers.”
Installation shot courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg.
I would like to conclude with two observations in order to indicate just how thought-provoking this exhibition and its accompany catalogue really are. First, the inclusion of three statuettes of nude women is certainly noteworthy inasmuch as the nude female disappears from the repertoire of Greek art until its reintroduction in the 4th century BCE by Praxiteles. Might these statuettes also represent one of the three goddess whose beauty Paris was to judge, and whose decision sparked the Trojan War? And, second, should we not place Mr. Rabin’s pattern of collecting into the context of the longevity of some of the objects in his collection? The nude, hatted figure driving the horse-drawn cart exhibits unmistakable signs of ancient repairs, suggesting it was long-lived because of its perceived value. I think we owe Mr. Rabin a debt of gratitude for likewise perpetuating the longevity of these objects, the value of which Dr. Bennetthas so eloquently explained.
Nude Female with Conical Hat, Greek, 8th century BC, Bronze, The Sol Rabin Collection
Wheeled Cart, Greek, (Samos?), Eighth century BC, Bronze, The Sol Rabin Collection
Dr. Bob Bianchi received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, after which he served as curator in the Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. During his career he has been the recipient of several post-doctoral fellowships, has subsequently served as a curator in museums in the States, Europe, and the Middle East, has excavated for 17 seasons in Egypt, and has taught as an adjunct professor at three universities. To date, he has published 96 books, 378 journal articles, and book reviews, and has appeared in 105 telecasts worldwide. As a critical art historian with a specialization in Ptolemaic Egypt, he continues to explore intercultural artistic connections between Egypt, Greece, and Rome. He recently retired, as chief curator, after almost twenty years of service with the Foundation Gandur pour l’Art, Genéve. Dr. Bianchi continues to publish, address international congresses, and serve as a fine art advisor and certified appraiser to collectors and institutions. He can be reached at Dr.BobBianchi@gmail.com.
Thursday, January 14, 7 pm- 8:30 pm From Chaos to Order with Dr. Michael Bennett and Dr. Sol Rabin An online ZOOM conversation between Senior Curator of Early Western Art Michael Bennett Ph.,D. and art collector Sol Rabin, Ph.D. to discuss the special exhibition. Dr. Rabin has been collecting in this area for over 30 years, and the vast majority of the works in his collection have never been on public display. Free for MFA members; Not-yet members $20. Online registration required.
