The Subtle Landscape

Cuckoo

September 18, 2009

Here is Eakins’ Agnew Clinic. Similar to his picture above, this honors a retiring surgeon also emphasizing his service as an educator. The roiling factor here though is more subversive.

Agnew Clinic

Eakins thought that there was nothing more beautiful than the human body and went to great lengths to provide his students with the benefits of his talents. Including once disrobing for a young coed to show a real male body in motion.

On several occasions he allowed mixed gender life drawing classes. Such disregard for the mores of the time brought trouble upon him and he was released from his position. His choice of subject matter in the Agnew Clinic – a partially nude woman undergoing a mastectomy – was his retort.

Eakins was born in Philadelphia in 1844 and thus lived his early years hearing whispers of war, was sixteen when the Civil War broke out, and twenty-one when it ended. The mood in the birthplace of our nation must have been especially dark and turbulent through those developmentally crucial years. The ramifications upon his fertile cortex must have been like that of acid rain on a forest.

Jump forward a hundred years. World War II had been won, factories were busy, and our democratic engine of capitalism had a full head of steam. Everything was great – as long as one was white, straight, male, and in conformity. Unbeknownst to the “Fathers Who Knew Best” there grew an undercurrent of disquiet and seething.

The wake left on the leading edge of American consciousness shaped the art of the 1950s. Its profile is just as impossible to capture in one work or one artist as during the 1850s, but a glimpse of an inflection might be had just as with Eakins.

Robert Rauschenberg has been called a Neo-Dadaist which as defined by Oxford is “a movement characterized by anarchic revolt against traditional values”. Here’s one of his pieces. I’m not going to say that it foreshadows the incredible tumult of the sixties, but it sure does raise a few questions. It’s called Monogram and was completed in 1959

rauschenburg

The 1960s did come and saw foment and ferment of historic proportions. Cuban Missile Crisis. The Vietnam War brought response in all sorts of protest art. Pop Art mocked the rise of our Consumer Society. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), the sane and savvy, if sketchy, McMurphy was lobotomized for trying to help.

cuckoo

“One flew east and one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest”.

Posted in Art, consciousness/psychology | Leave a Comment »

Gross

September 11, 2009

From the early days of the republic through the antebellum years, the American zeitgeist had been ebullient, dynamic, and filled with ambition and wanderlust. Lewis and Clark, The Oregon Trail, Santa Fe, etc. The War Between the States however, catalyzed a wrenching change in its trajectory.

600,000 lives were lost during the horrible conflict that followed our nation’s youthful exuberance – over 1% of the population. That’d translate into an incomprehensible 3,000,000 today. Impossible for that not to be transformational, but the nature of the impact was not reserved to society’s human fabric. As Lewis Menand wrote in his The Metaphysical Club: “… the United States became a different country. The war alone did not make America modern, but the war marks the birth of modern America.”

The secession of the south allowed what was left of congress to be a venue of action not seen since. Progress. It created the first system of national taxation; first national currency; public universities; completion of the transcontinental railway; and set the Republican Party up to promote industrial capitalism for years to come.

The impact upon the common consciousness was darkly profound. Democracy was supposed to progress with ayes and nays not blood and gore. A proud American culture had given way to astonishing horror and irrationality. “To some the war seemed not just a failure of democracy, but a failure of culture, a failure of ideas.”

This came to mind the other day when I was thinking about a picture I’d seen in Philadelphia Museum of Art a few months ago while paging through a tome on American Art at home the other day. In the book I saw an image of the picture below, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri painted by George Caleb Bingham twenty years before the Civil War. I know nothing of the history of that work, but can imagine the take of contemporaneous urban viewers.

Fur Traders

“Wow. Wish I was there instead of behind this desk headed for idle conversation with friends this evening. That. That’s living. Trap a few beaver. Fish. Float down the river. I want to be part of the wild west. See stuff not seen before (Well, except for by Indians)” In actual fact, thousands of people paid to view such pictures and get their only taste of the frontier.

Now look at the picture from Philadelphia painted by Thomas Eakins ten years after the war’s end. Gross*. The title is The Gross Clinic. “This is what our guts look like folks. Get used to it. Shit happens. We obviously can not predict the outcome of this case just yet. He might die. Whatever. We’re learning from our mistakes.” Eakins thought this the best of his work. He submitted it to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia only to see it rejected. He sold it to Jefferson Medical College for $200.

gross clinic

The above is hardly scholarly, but it is impossible for me to imagine either picture to have been executed at the time of the other. The spirit of a time is also a great reality.

*I heard somewhere that usage of the word “gross” to mean disgusting dates from this work. A perusal of the OED yields nothing that would hold to the contrary.

**The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2001

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Wing to Wing

September 4, 2009

Much the same as a bird convincing its brood that their wings will indeed lift them, in his poem The Master Speed, Robert Frost describes the incipient power of their union to a young couple. “No speed of wind or water rushing by” though, this is something far beyond the physical realm.

At the heart of the “master speed” is “the power of standing still” – the ability to simply be fully present and find the mundane extraordinary. Ironic the difficulty that pace presents to assume, especially in these harried days. But only thus can a way begun to be found to live lives “wing to wing and oar to oar”.

Frost spent a few years at the same college from which I graduated and that thought took me to my freshman year roommate. He’s now an artist and in 2003 produced a series which comprised his Monogamy Project.

In the catalogue he wrote “ Painting and monogamy are dated practices oversteeped in tradition and held in suspicion. Having thus been marginalized they become, surprisingly, areas that are ripe again for truly liberative activity. It is my intention to celebrate these options.”

There are six paintings in the series: Was a boy; Was adolescent; Am a man; Is a woman; Is a cellist; Am a father.

Here’s Am a Man:

Stockwell Am a Man

At first it surprised me that therewith my artist friend discussed the philandering of poet William Carlos Williams. He includes Williams’ poem Asphodel, That Greeny Flower in which a tortured regret and plea for forgiveness are conveyed. “Having your love, I was rich…”

I get it now.

Here’s Is A Woman:

Stockwell Is a Woman

Here he allows himself to “make this a beautiful painting… Follow all of my desires that call for full color and ripe shapes… To desire is to be alive… Desire gets us off the couch…” Being my father’s son, and even though he wasn’t much into poetry, I get this part right away.

The catalogue, in its entirety, comprises a provocative “love poem” and at the end of a recent reading I reconsidered Frost’s beautiful metaphor of wings and oars. The visual images of the generative rhythms pop up right away, but what gives it its power is thought of the epic voyage that follows.

*Craig Stockwell is the erstwhile roommate. www.craigstockwell.com

Posted in Art, Poetry | 1 Comment »

Amazing Grace

August 28, 2009

Ti and Nathan

In the middle of one night a little more than twenty-nine years ago, I was minding my own business drinking a weak cup of coffee in the delivery room of a local hospital. Wife was hyperventilating on a gurney across from me.

The space was quite different from that of the two other such facilities in which I’ve found myself and in fact it no longer exists. The walls were unusually tall and there was a light catching clerestory window near the ceiling. The approach of a thunderstorm was thus made quite apparent by unnerving pulses of light and shadow well in advance of any associated sound effects.

It must have been a fast moving cold front because it came on with disturbing speed and menace. The pounding of the rain on the window made the panes bow and weep. The lighting became nearly continuous and the thunder grew to a deafening crescendo. Loose vials and small instruments rattled on the stainless steel countertops.

Boom boom BOOM. A bolt apparently hit a nearby transformer which exploded and lit the sky up with an incredible flash of blue. Lights went out. Just as the generator kicked in and they flickered back on there was a wail. Holy dogs. I stood and pressed my back against the wall and wondered what in the world I’d gotten myself in for.

“It’s a girl” Doc said. New force of nature would have been closer to the truth. She = MC2

With that for a start, I shouldn’t have been surprised when a little more than a year ago she emailed us from Melbourne that she was going to Tasmania with some boy. Tasmania! Who goes to Tasmania? Isn’t the place full of devils? Who’s this dude?

I soon calmed down and realized that she was taking him to see our good friends Dirk and Loretta. Aha! During the visit I called and Dirk said “No worries man, he’s a really fine bloke. You’ll like him.”

Other daughter visited and sent rave reviews and photos. Wife and I hip checked each other in front of the computer screen to get a glimpse. He looked pretty good. Daughter smiled broadly.

In the flesh even better. Man. Firm handshake and confident countenance. Didn’t take long to find that they’d been cut from the same cloth. Both drawn to land’s end.

Me very lucky boy.

Ti Nathan Wedding walk on drive

Posted in Family, Travel | 1 Comment »

Why try? It’s beautiful!

August 21, 2009

The film in question, Berlin Alexanderplatz, is an influential work made for German TV in 1980. Rainer Werner Fassbinder largely followed the novel written by Alfred Doblin in 1929. It is the difficult story of an attempt to lead an honest life from the midst of robbers, whores, pimps, and killers.

This short hommage by Laurie Anderson alludes to a Buddhist parable in which, near the end of his life, the sage gathered his disciples close to a pond into which he reached and withdrew a lotus flower. As he held it up and moved silently among them, his confused followers made obtuse attempts to relate it to the teachings.

Finally the master came to Mahakayapa who, zapped with understanding, smiled broadly and thus was given the white flower. “What can be said I have said to you”, smiled the Buddha, “and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa”.

Why even try to explain the beauty of a flower? Such effort impedes appreciation. Sin.

What Fassbinder film is it?

The one-armed man walks into a flower shop

And says: What flower expresses

Days go by

And theyjust keepgoing by endlessly

Pulling you Into the future

Days go by

Endlessly

Endlessly pulling you

Into the future?

And the florist says: White Lily.

Posted in Film, Literature, Religion | Leave a Comment »

ooooh yaaaa

August 14, 2009

ferris_buellers_day_off

A while back I said that my favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz. It’s still a pretty great flic, but the way I now constellate things has been eclipsed by Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The latter has recently been all over the movie channels due to the untimely death of director John Hughes.

Ferris opens and closes the film succinctly summarizing his approach to life, as well as the best work of many philosophers that I particularly admire: “Yep, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Life moves by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around you might miss it.”

There is an early allusion to his predecessor Huck Finn. Ben Stein, as teacher taking roll reads: “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller.” No response. Same thing happens in Twain’s book when Huck skips class. Guess which one said of his ploy: “it’s childish and stupid, but then so is high school”. Could be either.

The storyline is also like that of Ulysses (Joyce’s that is) in that while a rich and deep tale, it only spans one day in a life. There is even a counterpart to Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy at its end: “…first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes”.

After following Ferris across Chicago (instead of Dublin) for a day his girlfriend, Sloane Peterson, is amazed and totally taken by his preternatural wisdom, adroit maneuvering, and incredible joie de vivre. This is a high school comedy though and so at the end, watching him with confidence enter a gauntlet impassable for all but he, she simply offers: “He is going to marry me”.

As sort of a coda after the narrative is complete Bueller looks at us and says “You still here? It’s over. Go home, go.” He has committed day of his life to show us how to take hold of our own. He figures that those who’ve learned something are on with it and those who haven’t will never get it.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

-Spinoza

Thus shall you think of this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

-Diamond Sutra as translated by the Dalai Lama

What, me worry?

– Alfred E. Newman

Posted in Film, Literature, Religion | Leave a Comment »

Thanks Bro!

August 7, 2009

Few years ago I joined my wife at her artist-in-residency at the Buffalo National River near Jasper, Arkansas. It is a spectacularly beautiful place. And much wilder than I’d imagined.

Arkansas B

Her lodging was an apartment above a remote stable used by the NPS to effect backcountry patrols. One evening she heard a dog barking outside. She loves dogs and having finished dinner went onto the balcony* and threw out a few scraps for her visitor. The moment she did so a bear rushed from the woods in contest. It won. Tough neighborhood.

Our anniversary fell during our stay and so late that day we had a glass of wine and headed in town for dinner. On the way I spotted a snake along the road and of course had to stop to investigate. Didn’t take long to see that it was a rattler. Timber Rattler.

I quickly grabbed one of the ski poles we had in the back of the car and ran up to the snake before it could slither off the road into the bushes and away. It wasn’t big on the idea, but couldn’t mount much of an offense because I kept it from coiling.

After a short pas de deux, I had it draped over the pole and held it in the air to show off (umpteenth time – one day I’ll impress her…) for my bride. “Get a little closer, stupid, so I can get a good picture” she said.

Arkansas snake

While maneuvering about, I thought to myself that it seemed sort of sluggish, that I could probably safely grab it just behind its head and make it bare its fangs for the camera. Dad taught us the procedure on a bull snake forty years ago and I’ve had lots of practice since, though never with a viper. Indeed pet bull snake Beulah was about the size of my new friend.

Just as I began to choke up on the pole, a conversation I’d had with my MD brother came to mind. While talking about Dad and snakes, he asked me to guess what the description of a typical snake bite victim might be. I can’t remember if I guessed it or he told me, but the answer is “drunk white guy”.

Had that memory not come up I’m sure I would have gone for it. But not wanting to embarrass myself (also for the umpteenth time) I put it off to the side of the road and soon it disappeared. We went on to have a fine evening.

Upon return home I did a little research and found that Timber Rattlesnakes aren’t really all that venomous. Given another chance I might give it a try. I am 100% certain that my brother would agree that our father would not have hesitated. He’d have been 82 today.

*From which was taken the photo above.

**Recent research (WSJ 5/12/09) indicates that those scary snakebite kits – complete with razor blade and suction device – might not be the way to go. The trauma wrought by the incision does more harm than good and an application of suction by itself is ineffective. Get bit by a snake just head to the ER ASAP.

Posted in Family, Snakes, Travel | 1 Comment »

Jewel Box

July 31, 2009

Horace Greely famously told Josiah B. Grinnell to “Go west, young man, go west”. The Congregational minister did and ended up in the middle of Iowa and a town here now bears his name. It is a wonderful place with much to see and do. Grinnell College is there and its campus is magnificent. Make sure to visit the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, a neat building designed by Cesar Pelli. North facing light catchers bathe the stuff on display in its Faulconer Gallery with slightly blue toned light.

But another building is even more interesting and alone worth the short trip north from I-80. It is Louis Sullivan’s Merchant National Bank. It is the finest example of the several “Jewel Box” banks that he designed in second half of his career.

Sullivan Grinnell 1

Sullivan is famous for his “form ever follows function” which is often misinterpreted it seems to me. Sullivan didn’t mean minimalism or the absence of adornment. One look at the entrance to the bank and its explosion of terra-cotta should put any such though to rest.

A reporter wrote at opening on January 1, 1915 that something “must have worked like hashish” on the architect to induce such a vision. Such a thought would not grace any review of, say, David Chipperfield’s Figge Art Museum.

Sullivan meant that a building’s ultimate form should be the organic emanation of the spirit of the place and its people. This bank was built as a repository for the fruits of the labor of area farmers with reverence for the hard work signaled thereby.

Sullivan Grinnell 2

The entrance faces south and thus for most of the year and most of each day sun pours through the beautiful stained glass window. There is also stained glass on the east which fills with light till noon or so and sky blue glass on the ceiling***.

The effect of the glass and light is beautiful, but perfectly not profound. No “metaphysics of light” here****. A lesser hand would have combined the same elements to a more clerical effect which would have not only been disrespectful to Fr Grinnell’s gothic church (which used to be just across the street to the east) but also to the local common consciousness.

The ceiling height is about twenty feet creating a spatial experience which (without too much of a stretch) could be said to allude to one in a barn or in a field looking toward the sky. Or, indeed, like being a gem in a jewel box – but one with some of the dividers missing. Sullivan Grinnell 3

The interior was changed and a touch diminished by the removal of the cages over the teller areas which originally served more of a purpose of tradition and proportion than security. The effect is as if an element had been removed from a piece of abstract sculpture. You would feel the absence of something even if you had no way to know what was missing.

That extirpation would seem to have been unnecessary because a functioning bank was appended on the north and Sullivan’s jewel appropriately repurposed to house the chamber of commerce. The commission for the addition must have been intimidating, but was done with respect and rhythm by Davenport firm Stewart-Robison-Laffan.

Finally, this may be hard to believe, but the building was more comfortable in context in 1915 than now. It was then of similar size and proportion to that of its immediate neighbors. Roof lines met. Now to the west is a low slung bit of impermanence and the aforementioned addition obvious in its respectfulness.

Sullivan has been called the “father of the skyscraper”, yet the grand part of his career had been long over at the time of this commission. Perhaps sensitized by intervening vicissitudes he found himself able to channel the essence of Grinnell and show what he “meant when he talked about the genius of America.*****

*Words of a reporter in the 1,1,15 Grinnell Herald.

** The glass was done by Louis Millet who was related to Jean-Francois Millet, the French painter know for his paintings of peasant farmers such as The Gleaners

***Term coined by Abbot Suger in the early stages of Gothic Architecture

**** January 1, 1915 Grinnell Herald

***** Some of the above came from the book by Bill Menner which is well represented in this website:

http://www.grinnelliowa.gov/SullivanBank/HistoryRoad.html

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Pliers

July 24, 2009

About six months ago a tooth began to bother me. It was a molar. Top right second from the back. Really began to ache and I called my friendly dentist. X-rays and probing found nothing definitive. “Nothing heinous” he said. “Could be a crack”.

Pain subsided. Mentioned again at next regular check up. Had me clamp down various strange ways with no acute response. Began to ache though after visit and through the next day or so. Long as I didn’t chew on that side everything was fine.

During yurt party last weekend over wine and beer I was flapjawing and distracted. Chomped a couple handfuls of peanuts. Great night, but mouth woke me up the next am. Throbbing got continually worse. Called dentist. His sweet wife, also a friend, said he was fishing in Wisconsin. I replied that I hoped he could squeeze me in on Monday.

I called back later and she gave me his cell phone number. Tooth socket was so swollen that tooth protruded significantly below the others and it was impossible to chew anything without it touching down first. Throbbed like a heart in the hands of an Aztec priest.

He met me in his office several hours later. “Cracked through I’m afraid” he said with a kindly smile. “It’s a gonner.” He explained the options all of which began with extraction.

Next morning his nurse called with an appointment later in the day at the specialist’s. Oh boy. Expansive empty waiting area. Perfunctory receptionist. “Fill this out. Both sides. Initial every line.” Insurance info sure, but also a harrowing litany of possible complications.

I didn’t have to worry that the antibiotics might attenuate the effectiveness of any birth control, but the possibility of: bone chips, socket rupture, nerve damage, infection from the cadaver bone used to fill gaps, jaw fracture, and more didn’t exactly comfort me.

Led back to the room, I started to sweat. Doc whirled in. Visage and demeanor of Wallace Shawn. “Who’s beatin’ up on ya?” I gave him the name of my dentist and started to tell him that the swelling had gone down and maybe…

He pulled my jaws apart, inserted a block of rubber to prop it open and wrapped gauze around my tongue (so I wouldn’t lick his fingers he told me). Swabbed some electric tasting numbing compound. Stood for a moment – elbows folded, dripping syringe in one hand, cigarette in the other – and then came at me.

“We’ll give that stuff about ten minutes to numb ya up.” Back in nine he had the nurse place the meat-hook like suction apparatus for which there was no need – my mouth was dryer than a mummy’s. Reaching in with the pliers, he grabbed hold of the small half of the tooth and twisted and turned with vigor. Sounded like a novice shifting the gears of a manual transmission.

“Got it!” he said. “Rinse?” I knew that I’d never be able to swallow and didn’t respond. “Second half will be a little tougher” he said. “Doin’ ok? Got a good hold on somethin’?”

Oh shit. He grabbed the fat half with the pliers and both hands, rocked back on one leg, and raised the other to a position upon my chest. I stared so intently at the ceiling that it began to smoke. I was completely soaked and started to slide down the chair. Nurse grabbed me by the ears and pulled me back up.

It was like parts of a chicken being separated by another novice who can’t quite find the joint and so, cursing, twists and turns the drumstick until…

Finally, it gave and he stumbled back against the wall. With a backhand toss he flung it out of my field of view. I heard it hit the trash can. “Two points. Dry him up and I’ll be back” he said. I’d forgotten that he was going to have to pack the socket to prepare for the implant I’ll never return to have.

Sat there for a few minutes with blood soaked gauze hanging out of my mouth. Worst had to be over. Return though he sure enough did. Pulled the gauze out and with an Eberhard #2 he proceeded to pack the cadaver bone up into the socket. Then took a fat curved needle threaded with monofilament and threw a few stitches to hold it all in, told a joke, and left.

Nurse shoved clean gauze back into my mouth while telling me to eat soft foods for a while, not to overexert and thus pop the stitches, and that the gritty discharge, bleeding, and horrible taste and odor due to the anaerobic bacteria sure to soon seethe up there would only last a few days.

“Drinks?” was all I could think of asking.

“Long as you don’t mix it with the pain meds.”

As I struggled to write the check a few minutes later, the cashier told me that I’d been lucky they’d been able to fit me in. A primal grunt was all I could muster. But my wife recognized it from across the lobby, came over, and helped me to the car.

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Do You Know Where You Are?

July 17, 2009

birds foot 6 001

No, alas, this is not in my yard. Not yet anyway. It’s called Bird’s Foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus to a botanist) and is a member of the huge Pea or Bean (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) family. The photo was taken along the interstate at the end of our ravine.

The name Trefoil comes from Latin via Old French meaning three leaves -like the clover to which it is related.* It has just come into bloom now and will remain so for most of the summer. This bright delight is not native to North America having been imported from Europe for forage.

According to Iowa State University Extension, it was only first planted in 1938 but now covers more than 500,000 acres in Iowa alone. Farmers like it because it is hardy once established; will withstand close grazing; is highly nutritious; and non-bloating. It has provided daily weight gains in cattle exceeding a 30% premium over fertilized grass.

birds foot 4

Laterly the plant became popular with road crews whose mission was/is to stabilize roadside growth. It creates a dense low mat, will crowd out plants with a yearn to grow tall, blooms low and so can be cropped close. If you live around here and are not agoraphobic, it will doubtless and frequently play a role in your field of view.

Not surprisingly, citing almost exactly the same factors listed above, the philistines about consider it invasive, a weed, and incredibly difficult to control. “An ecological threat” Control by conflagration not only doesn’t work, but instead increases seed germination! Ha!

birds foot 6 002

There is a new book out** that explores the chasm between us and our setting – the green movement notwithstanding. The author writes of the seafarers of Puluwat in the South Pacific who can navigate by means of subtle swell patterns. And of the Inuit who do the same with wind. The Bedouin the stars. Here in suburbia some use a GPS to cross town. What’s up with the disconnect? Is there a cost?

The Trefoil’s beautiful, isn’t it? Shades of yellow pea-like flowers with clover-like leaves. The seed pod arrangement sort of resembles a bird’s foot hence the name. birds foot seed pod Doesn’t the fact that a lowly weed can be so gorgeous and have such a wonderful back-story give you pause? Makes me think of Blake:

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

*The word also serves as a term in Gothic architecture referring to a manner of ornamentation by foliation or cusping. Look for it in church window-lights.

trefoil

**The book is You Are Here Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon but Get Lost in the Mall, by Collin Ellard. It was reviewed in the NYTBR Sunday July 12 by Jonah Lehrer.

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