• Tag Archives Art and Culture
  • Tea Master for a Day

    46  bar falls 29.96 3mph NNW dewpoint 25

              Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    Last night the moon of winds cast shadows on our yard, elongated dogwoods, thick oak trunks and thin lines of multiple raspberry canes.  This point in the seasonal change is delicate.  Thin ice forms a lattice over the snow while tiny drops of water gather along the roof line ready to plummet the final distance to the earth.  Snow and grass play encirclement with grass spreading outward from trees and shrubs while the snow holds its own over the lawn, the hills and prairie grass.  Here there daubs of photosynthetic green have begun to appear.  Rosemary beneath the steps.  Tufts of grass up close to the house.  It is a gradual change for the moment, but soon the earth will leap and shout, fly flags of bright colors and clothe itself again in verdant splendor.

    Tour today with students, 6th graders, from a Muslim school in Fridley.  As near as I could tell, the kids were mostly Somalia, all born here, but there parents emigrated.  I had the boys, David Fortney had the girls.  We circled each other for half an hour in the Islamic gallery as these children drank in the physical objects of their cultures, linking themselves to the Seljuk Turks, the Safavid Persians and the Mughals of India.  After half an hour we went into the Weber Collection (Japanese traveling exhibition).  I asked them to become tea masters selecting objects for a tea ceremony for persons unfamiliar with Japanese art.

    We saw Hotei reach for the moon and a Zen monk’s ordination festival.  We learned wabi from the Negoro ware with its faded red lacquer, worn and used; we learned sabi from the tea wares, especially the lumpy and imperfect mizusashi.  I read them a Daoist poem and its conversion into a Buddhist poem by the extraction of only one line, spun downward in a flowing cursive script.  Time went fast and at the end they picked objects for their tea ceremony:  8 Views of Xiao and Xiang, the delicate miniature Song dynasty-like landscape, the Negoro spoon, the tea caddy with a silk cover, Oribe teaware and a few dishes for tea food.  Then we were done.

    Afterward I copied and copied and copied, even to the end of the toner cartridge, material on Chinese bronzes.  I have a tour on Saturday that will focus only on our Chinese bronzes.  I chose them because I wanted to go deeper into the world of early Chinese dynasties like the Shang and the Chou and the Han.


  • Snow, Snow, and Then, Some More

    33 bar steady 0mph ESE windchill33 29.85   a buncha snow

             Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    We got socked after I came home from Frank’s at around 10.  Maybe 4 or 5 inches of wet spring snow.  All the leaves, rocks and beginning to peak through patches of grass are white again.  Tourney snow we called it Indiana.

    Gotta get out and see if the snowblower can take it.  Often, at the beginning of the winter and especially in its last gasps the snow is so heavy and wet that it plugs the chute of the snowblower.  Then, I just wait for the grand snow remover in the sky to work his solar wonder.

    Allison sent me this note after the docent book group discussion.  I think she caught the sense of the meeting. 

    Charlie,

    I enjoyed the discussion meeting today.  I want to thank you for your efforts.  I think we were chasing something elusive.  And also feeling each other out-on some pretty big subjects.

    Personally, I think Dale phrased his initial question rather awkwardly.  

    However, Sharon intrigued me with her question which was “Why doesn’t contemporary religion seem to make better use of art?

    So between the two of them we are left with something corresponding to “what came first the chicken or the egg?”  Did art lose its need for religion or did religion lose its need for art?

    I would have liked to have the team fill out your worksheet and plan a tour.

    Speaking of your tour ideas, it would be great to get some serious discussions going on a tour.  You need the right people to show up for that to work.  


  • Up At 5AM and Hard At It

    33  bar steep fall 30.11  6mph N  windchill 33

        Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

    Boy is my sense of time screwed up.  Got up at 4:30AM for the bathroom.  Went back to bed.  No sleep.  Waited.  Still no sleep.  So at 5AM I got up, went downstairs, opened by John Weber collection catalogue and tried to figure out what to do next.  This was difficult because I had put my notes for the tour in the carrier I take when I go into the museum.  That location didn’t occur to me until ten sleepy minutes had gone by shuffling this paper and that trying to locate the item I needed to finish the tour.  Those notes.

    But I did find them.  As a quiet spring snow began to fall outside in the dark, I entered again the world of the Heian poets, the Shining Prince Genji and the floating world of courtesans, no theatre and elegant costume.  Japan and China are strange and distant cultures for most Westerners so entree into their world does not come without some struggle, some setting aside of preconceived notions. 

    Over the last three years in particular I have worked hard to get a handle on the historical context in both Japan and China.  I’ve worked harder on China, but Japan has had some time from me, too.  As so often happens in the life of the mind, eventually the heart begins to follow and somewhere along the line I went from interested to captivated. 

    It was easy then to begin comparing poems used in the poetry competitions, mythical contests in which cultured Japanese matched poets from different eras, then matched two of their poems that seem to have resonance.  The competition was not between the two poets in question of course, but among the Japanese who created the matches.  It would be like, say, putting Robert Frost’s “Snowy Evening” against one of Emily Dickinson’s darker pieces, Wallace Stevens and Coleridge. 

    So it went for two hours until the dogs began to whine and I let them out of their crates, fed them and began my own breakfast.

    After breakfast I caught another hour and a half or so of sleep, then drove into the Common Roots Cafe where the docent book club gathered to discuss the (apparent) lack of religion/spirituality in contemporary art.  I guided this discussion, but I’m afraid I didn’t conceive a way to do it fruitfully.  We had a lot of conversation, though, and I think we may have gotten greater clarity from it than was immediately obvious. 

    It was Tom Blyfeld’s 80th birthday.  He celebrates his 56th wedding anniversary on Friday.  He mentioned the doctor who delivered two of his children, a man 90 something who has great-great grandchildren. Amazing.  He will celebrate his 65th wedding anniversary.  These are numbers unattainable by most of us in the divorce generation.

    Tonight is the celebration of St. Patrick’s day at Frank Broderick’s.  He bought the meat last Friday.  His table always groans with meat and potatoes and cabbage.  I look forward to it each year.


  • Art and Religion

    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.


  • A Tea Master Selects Objects

    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.


  • A Chingis Khan Red Water Buffalo Wallet

    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.


  • Security as the Museum’s Id

    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.


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

    +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.


  • The Miracle of Hydraulics

    -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’s Beginnings

    -2  46%  20%  0mph S bar 30.37 steep drop windchill-4  Winter

                Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

    As predicted the day has continued cold, thought we’ve warmed a bit from the early readings.  Still, when the high is below zero, you know you’re dealing with a bitter time.  We have the most trouble with the whippets when the temperatures drop.  They have zero body fat, so they do not like to go outside.  This increases the pressure on their bladders.  Accidents do happen.

    The work of the day involves the waning religious influence on art in the modern era, though, as I’ve learned, the decline can really be seen post-Renaissance.  James Elkins makes a creditable argument for the pervasive nature of religious art during most of the millennia of human existence.  Art’s beginnings lie somewhere in our murky transition toward full consciousness, a transition accelerated when humans realized they would die.  If not in the service of the hunt, a ritual activity in its earliest form, then in the service of funeral rites, early humans drew elegant animals on cave walls and adorned their dead with red ochre, feathers and other items felt necessary to the afterlife.

    This general trend continued for many cultures well into the modern era, but in the West, sometime in the Renaissance/post-Renaissance period, religious art became a particular kind of art, rather than the primary purpose for artistic work.  It was during the Renaissance that an emphasis began on the skill of the artist in addition to the importance of the subject matter rendered.  These two factors, appreciation of the talents of individual artists and the addition of subject matter like history, portraiture and mythopoetic themes opened a fissure between what had previously been art’s sole domain, the religious, and other forms of art.

    More on this as it gets clearer to me.