• Category Archives Art and Culture

  • Art and Religion

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    30  bar steady 30.06 1mph WNW windchill 30

         First Quarter Moon of Winds

    When I woke up, Kate was long gone.  It was 9:30.  I missed my nap yesterday and I picked the sleep time this AM.

    The rest of the morning, what there was left anyhow, I used looking over my notes for the religion and contemporary art discussion I will lead on Monday.  This topic follows two ancient trails I have followed for many, many years.  I would not characterize myself as an expert in either one, though I know enough to guide conversation.

    The result of this work has convinced me that there are several interesting tours at an encyclopedic museum like the MIA that do not follow either the cutesy or the artworld insider glimpse that most of our tours use.  With tours like love and scandal or chocolate whatever we give a cutesy turn to looking at art. It gets some people into the galleries I suppose and and the works themselves have many different facets, so these tours are not vacuous at all, but they don’t focus the mind.

    The other category of tour:  On Dragons Wings, a Taste of Asia, Art of the Americas, Art of the Ancient World give tour goers an insiders tour, a short glimpse of the world of art history, connossieurship and curating offered through a slice of an encyclopedic museum.  Nothing wrong with this either, though I often wonder about the value of this brief an introduction to six to eight objects.  It may spark interest that tour goers will pursue on their own.  I hope so.

    The kind of tour topic this religion and art material suggests could offer a third type of tour, one that takes a point of view and pursues an argument through use of various objects.  The relationship between religion and art has a long history with many chapters and in some senses the most interesting chapters come last in the world of contemporary art.   The MIA has a much better collection for pursuing this topic than, say, the Walker because we have art as old as the Lady of LaMouth and art as recent as Hirsch’s, Death of St. John.  Other interesting tours along these lines would involve the relationship between literature and art.


    Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality 📎and tagged

  • Aramaic and the Democratic Primary Race

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    28  bar rises 30.06 5mph N windchill 28

        First Quarter Moon of Winds

    Yesterday I had tours with a group of 4th graders from Hastings and 1st graders from Apple Valley.  Though these tours don’t race the intellectual engine, they are fun.  These kids are thoughtful, attentive and excited about the art that they see.  It refreshes my eye each time I do one of these tours because the kids see things I don’t see and make conjectures about the works that don’t occur to me. 

    An example of the latter is a discussion I had with the kids from Hastings about the Fanatics of Tangiers.  Delacroix painted a Sufi sect as it engaged in an ecstatic dance to reach the wisdom of their saint.  (BYB-Fanatic is ethnocentric, not to mention xenophobic, but it is the name of the painting.)  The kids looked at the sect and imagined that the group surging foreward through the streets (the sect) might be being chased by animals; or, perhaps the people who stood around had sent an army to the crowd’s village and chased them back here. 

    Another great thing about tour days is the opportunity to connect with docent classmates and to make new friends from among the docent corps.  Today Stacy, Careen, Annie, Sally and Wendy were there.  They reveal, among them, the infinite variety our species takes, even among those who appear so similar.  All white, all well-educated and with one exception upper middle class at least, these women vary a lot in their personal details.  Stacy’s husband runs and owns a business recharging ink cartridges while she works at a Lutheran church in various capacities.  Careen is a Quebecois, an architect and a physician’s spouse like me.  Annie’s husband is from Lagos, Nigeria and contracted malaria while there.  Annie’s adopted.  Sally is a retired trainer and organizational development person whose daughter almost drowned in a ferry sinking off the coast of Thailand not too long ago.  Wendy has bright kids, and married an Italian.  She’s works on her conversational Italian for trips to the see the in-laws.

    Lunch with Frank.  We went to the Black Forest where we were the only customers in the dining room except for a couple at the very far end next to 26th Street.  We both had sausages and we both knew better.  We talked about travel, serious illness, Aramaic and the silliness, if it weren’t so damned serious, of the late stage Democratic primary race.


    Art and Culture Friends 📎and tagged

  • A Tea Master Selects Objects

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    44 bar steady 29.83 2mph WSW windchill 43

         Waxing Crescent Moon of Winds

    The snow mass has begun to recede.  Our north facing property retains snow longer than our neighbors, but the snow over the firepit area has shrunk below the top rail of the fence.  The temperature today gives us the general trend, though we may have a “major snow event” next week.  These late snows don’t last.

    The gardening season will begin soon and I’m ready to go to work.  Check on my baby trees, finish the firepit, begin the permaculture planning. 

    Had a break through on the Weber Collection tour.  I will use the notion of a tea-master preparing a tea ceremony for guests unfamiliar with Japanese art and its long traditions.  Together we will choose items that will give each of us a once in a lifetime experience together.  Let’s wander through our collection of possible tea objects and decide what will work best.

    The Great Work is many small works.


    Art and Culture Great Work 📎and tagged

  • A Honu for Dylan

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    30  bar steep fall 29.97  1mph W windchill 29

           Waning Crescent of the Snow Moon

    Back to the MIA for the first time in almost a month.  Took Jennifer a Honu (green sea turtle) t-shirt for Dylan.  Talked to Jennifer and Paula, picked up my mail-box stuff and went over to Kristine Harley’s office and checked out the Weber lecture by Matthew Welch. 

    After that, I went upstairs and did a quick once over through the exhibit.  Loved the Nara era Buddha, Hotei reaching toward the moon, the demon queller and the tiger, the Brine Maidens, the turtle kimono, the oribe tea-ware, the Edo paintings, some of the monochromatic stuff the name of which I can’t recall right now.  I also thought the modern robes with ice-crack design, open book and colored lights patterns were great, too.  Next work is to read the object labels I printed out and the catalog, then take tours with 2 or 3 docents doing the tours and at least one CIF guide, Kumiko Voller, so I can learn how to pronounce everything.

    Amanda’s pregnant.  Saw Shiela, too. 

    On the drive I’ve begun relistening to From Yao to Mao, the 5,000 year history of China.  This history has lasted so long and has had so many twists and turns, I find it hard to keep straight, so I’m hoping repetition will work.  It’s more interesting the second time through since I now have some context.


    Art and Culture World History 📎and tagged

  • Orientalists All Three

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Back from a workout.  Slower today.  As I went out on the lanai before I headed for my aerobics, I noticed a disturbance in the calm.  A rustle of waves preceded a fluke, it fanned in the air glistening with water, then followed the great body down.  A birthday wish from an ocean mammal to a land mammal.  Mahalo.

    As I walked along the ocean, I reflected a bit on the peculiar fate of my nuclear family.  Mom died early.  Dad lived several unhappy years in a marriage ill-fitted to both him and Rosemary.  Mary ended up first in Malyasia, then in Singapore, following her interest in linguistics.  Mark traveled the world from Vladivostok to Moscow, Moscow to Turkey, Turkey to Israel, then, by some route to Bangkok which he found just right.  They’ve both in Asia almost longer than I lived in Alexandria.  Though I’ve remained stateside, I have developed, quite independently of them, an interest in Asian art, cinema, literature and, of late, philosophy. 

    Then, too, there is love affair with the Islands.  What is it about our lives, childhoods in the most common of Midwestern smalltowns, parents with no interest as far as I know in anything Asian, that lead us, all three, by quite different routes to turn our faces east?  It would be easy to cite the ascendance of Asia in the last two decades as a magnetic influence, but in fact all three of us have had our interests prior to those decades.

    There is one thing common to all three of us, the wanderlust.  Mom was overseas during WW II and Dad found traveling significant for its own sake.  I suppose this gave us all a sense of rootlessness, or, at least, made it easy to detach ourselves from the familiar, and so opened us to the wide world.  What strange motion in the quantum sphere torqued our attention toward China, Singapore, Thailand, Japan I do not know.  But, it is a fact.


    Art and Culture Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • A Chingis Khan Red Water Buffalo Wallet

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    30  77%  24%  3mph NNW bar30.04 falls windchill28 Imbolc

                    Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    Got a package today from Mary in Singapore.  It came with many, many stamps bearing the picture of the large golden tree squirrel.  Looks like a lemur to me.  She sent a wonderful anthology of contemporary Asian art and, as has become her habit, knowing my interest in cinema, the largest grossing Asia movie for 2007.  And a red water buffalo wallet with Chinghis Khan on the front.  The only one in my neighborhood.

    Having kin in Southeast Asia makes it feel less foreign, less faraway.  It also means I get a ground level view of events there like the tsunami and the political unrest in Thailand for example.  It is a privilege to have this window on these Asian cultures and one I cherish.

    Today I will finish Hero, the Jet Li wu shu feature about the assassin and Qin Shi Huang Di.  It is one of two recent Chinese movies dealing with the king of Qin, Shi Huang Di, who unified the six warring states at the end of the eastern Zhou dynasty.  He has a peculiar position in Chinese history, since he is seen as the father of a unified China, but also as a tyrant and a destroyer of cultural treasures.  In the interest of a common language and culture for a unified China he is said to have burned all the books he could get his hands on at the time. 

    He then decreed a common script and common laws, using the political philosophy of Han Fei-Zi.  Han Fei-Zi was a political thinker whose general type of thought became known as Legalism since it elevated a strict system of laws and punishment even above the ruler.  His political philosophy reminded me most of Machiavelli’s Prince, but I may not understand them either of them very well.  In my view they both see themselves as realists, preferring the pragmatic to the ideal, the functional to the just.  In this sense neither of them are as villianous as history has cast them; they might be seen as situational relativists, creating a system of governance that works for the times, not for all time.

    Hero and The Emperor and the Assassin both portray Qin Shi Huang Di as a clever, courageous and intelligent ruler. Both also portray him as relentless, paranoid and unyielding.  In Hero the focus is on the Jet Li character, Nameless, the prefect of a Qin ten mile square area.  In the Emperor and the Assassin the focus is on the king himself and his lover from the stater of Zhao, where they both grew up.  They are very different movies with, I think, very different intentions, but both present an interesting take on this controversial man, the first Emperor of China.


    Art and Culture Cinema and Television Family World History 📎and tagged

  • Security as the Museum’s Id

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    25  66%  20%  0mph  SSW bar29.90  windchill24  Winter

                 Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    At the MIA I picked up my old security badge with the grinning face and a patch of remnant frontal hair which looked like a soft, brown green at the 1st hole.  This earned me admission to the basement, the haunt of the security guards.  I went in the basement to get my picture taken because the badges are, after all, a security concern, relegated to the basement, or id level of the museum.  This is the instinctive, protective part of the museum’s body; it strikes without forethought to protect art, then vitrines, cases and stands.  In a pinch they will protect people, too, but mostly it’s about the art.   Makes sense.  After all, the guy didn’t come in and sit on a patron; no, he chose the $500,000 Ming dynasty chair. (Now worth $750,000 after renovation)

    Anyhow, I went down the stairs.  On the left was the guards lounge with the artistic funky furniture and guard art on the wall.  On the right was the photo shop.  On the wall next to its door was an old museum sign in bronze, perhaps 3 feet high and 18 inches wide.  It gave the hours and days of the museum.  So, the basement is also where old signage goes to live after its working life is over.

    Once inside, more guard art on the walls, there were those little light reflecting umbrellas that photographers use, plus a tilted white board at desk level in front of the stool.  Pauline? had a Canon SLR digital on a tripod.  She took three shots:  I smiled broadly, quirkily, and deadpan. 

    “I’ll leave it to you to choose the most winning one,” I said and left the basement.

     Back here at home I’ve also begun my attempt to learn Chinese characters on my own, with the aid of softwared I bought a while back.  Over the  years I’ve tried to learn Welsh, Spanish, German and Greek.  I have some Latin and some French.  Languages are not my long suit, but I keep sticking my head back in the stocks every few years.   Part of me is ashamed I’ve never learned another language.  No, make that all of me.  Very ethnocentric and gauche American.


    Art and Culture General Travel 📎and tagged

  • How Does the Mummy’s Soul Find the Body If You Moved It?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    +20!  71%  18%  omph ESE  bar 30.08 steep fall  windchill19  Winter

                   Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

    Out of the door early this am.  Wanted to walk my Safari route, check on the objects.  Also wanted to get a fresh look at the calligraphy.

    Went upstairs to the second floor and started back in the Americas.  There are some fine additions to the America’s galleries:  an Annishinabe/Lakota blanket with a stunning design on a black field, an Olmec jade mask (it’s been out a while, but it’s still new to the collection.), a wonderful Haida bear-headed dagger and some new Inuit prints.  These last looked very Chinese to me, even down to chops in red.

    The Safari tour had a wide ambit since these kids had an interest in many things.  We discussed the art, saw some animals.  Peri, a young girl in a soft white coat, asked questions like:  How did they get the tusk off the elephant?  She also wanted to know, “How does the soul find the body if you moved the body?” (Lady Teshat).

    In the couple of hours plus between tours I ate lunch upstairs at D’Amico’s and read a catalogue from the National Museum at Taipei.  It had an excellent chapter on calligraphy.  After lunch, I wandered the galleries, checking out calligraphic styles, trying to learn how to recognize them, distinguish them.  Allison suggested using an abstract expressionist piece to talk about feeling in brushstrokes.  I did that. It seemed to work.  These kids, too, found all manner of things they wanted to see.  The Nevelsen.  The Tatra.  The Wu Family Reception Hall.  The Imperial Robes.  On the robes Darius thought it looked like a place where you hung clothes out to dry and then a place to fold them (the Imperial throne.).

    After the tours I hopped over to First Tech to see the Mac Air, but they don’t have any yet.  Not until the first of February or so. 

    Home.  Snack.  Write.  Workout.


    Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • Not a Good Sign

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -6  68%  29%  2mph  WNW  bar30.24  steep rise  windchill-8  Winter

                                  Full Winter Moon

    “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.” – Albert Camus

    When I went out to get the paper this morning, the full winter moon again hugged the horizon, this time a bright silver coin visible through the bare trees of our woods to the west.  Our paper comes, like most of us in the ‘burbs, to a rectangular box below our mailbox, perched on the road so both paper delivery and mail delivery can happen from the seat of a vehicle. 

    The trash man cometh at about the same time I goeth to get the paper.  As I stood and watched, the trucks long robotic arm moved out and away from the truck, gripped our black plastic trash container, moved a bit further out, then swept up and over the truck, inverting our container in mid-air causing the lid to fly open and the trash to spill out, white plastic bags full, into the maw of the truck.  The process reversed; I waved at the trash man as he pulled away, grabbed onto the handle and pulled the container on its ridiculous plastic wheels up the 100 foot incline of our driveway.  It scrunched in the below zero temperatures as it rolled and slid behind me.

    On the paper’s front page I could see a picture of our central banker, Ben Bernanke, with his head in his hands.  Not a good sign.

    Though I’ve done it less than Kate in recent months, getting the newspaper in the morning is an immersion in the weather and season at a point when it all seems fresh, just as dawn begins to break.  It is a meditation, at least for me, since I do it half asleep and therefore more open to the subtle messages of partially hidden moon, the screech of snow and the bite of the wind as it blows across my ungloved hands.

    This morning finds me at work on a safari tour for 2nd graders.  2nd graders are great; they respond and most without an inner censor.  I plan to use:  Moche pelican, Benin leopard, (the mummy, because the teacher wants it), the Cambodian lion, Corot’s deer nibbling leaves in a tree, Copley’s Fishing Party, Gaugin’s Under the Pandanus, Picasso’s Baboon and, perhaps the installation of children’s photographs.  Also today I’ll plan a calligraphy tour for 4th graders who’ve used ink, inkstones and brushes while learning brush painting and calligraphy.  Both should be fun.


    Art and Culture Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel 📎and tagged

  • The Miracle of Hydraulics

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -13  64%  19%  omph WSW bar30.43 steady  windchill-13  Winter

                Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

    Annie came over and we moved the old TV out near her car.  But, it was -10 and I couldn’t lift the damn thing into her car.  A real Minnesota moment. The air blistering cold and I’m trying lift this way too heavy TV in the back seat of a Chrysler generic car.  I’m a little guy and even when I work out I have real limits.  This was one. So.  I backed the truck out of the garage, put down the lift gate and horsed the TV onto the gate.  Lifted it up with the miracle of hydraulics and Kate will take it out to Annie on Monday.  Course, I have to secure it in their before she takes off with it.

    I’ve got enough on the religion and art historical perspective to write tomorrow.  My packet for the docent book club will contain a book recommendation, James Elkin’s The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art and an essay by Camille Paglia entitled, “Religion and Art in America.”  I’m going to summarize the beginning of Elkins because he lays out 5 different positions toward the religion and art question, each one helpful in its own way.  The bottom line appears to be the corrosive affects of modernism, seen first in what is now often called the early modern period which includes the Renaissance.  I’ll finish with this tomorrow and start work on Transcendentalism next.

    This is great way below zero work. 


    Art and Culture Family 📎and tagged