Speaking visually

This month, I retired from my university position, receiving the title Professor Emeritus.  My goal now is to become a person, rather than an occupation, living rather than preparing for a next step.

There is so much and yet, so little to say about our manifold crises.  A friend called me recently, overwrought with emotion, and said “the most important things cannot be said, but must be shown.”  A philosopher, he cited the final proposition in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:  “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”  But the Tractatus was concerned with the limits of logic expressed through verbal language, and specifically omitted other forms of expression.  I’m glad I’ve now moved my focus from words to visual expression, for I have no words for the longstanding conditions that manifest themselves in our current crises.

 I spent the spring indoors, refashioning my classes for remote instruction, grading, painting, working on university issues, and grading some more.  My painting focused on interior scenes – walls, ceilings, and floors.  Here’s a photo of some of those Divoc paintings, all on 12”x 12” wood panels. 

Here’s another set of Divoc panels, which replace rectilinear forms and perspective for two curves.  An insider note for newsletter readers:  all four of these compositions are based on the same two curves in the same relationship with each other.

Finally, another panel, this one depicting a surreal landscape I call Red Giant.  I take some solace from the fact that despite pestilence, genocide, and ecological destruction, the earth itself will remain for another 4 billion years, until our sun expands to become a red giant, likely engulfing the three innermost planets, including our own. 

Red Giant, acrylic on hardwood panel, 12” x 12” x 1.5”

I’ll end this message with hopes that you find ways to use the current crises to grow and to help us all thrive.

and then our world changed

Note that I didn’t title this “and then the world changed.”  Most elements of our physical world have not changed – the buildings and mountains still stand, birds and insects move about and reproduce, and we certainly still have weather.  Continuity abounds.

John and I are fine and grateful.  I do most of my academic work and my painting at home anyway, and I have always cooked most of our meals.  I’ve reformatted my courses to be accessed entirely through a “learning management system,” but the fine-tuning and grading continues apace.   

I’ve started a series of paintings in my current favorite format – smooth 12”x 12” hardwood panels, cradled atop a 1½“ frame, so they present well without any further framing.  The series is Dovic, and generally entails straight-sided figures in muted colors, with the shape and shade of the figures implying spatial relationships. The minimalist approach seems in keeping with these fluid, shape-changing times.

(Cross) cultural appropriation in the arts, 4

Think about this, though:  cultural appropriation, which is indeed a basis for much art, is a problem when it reduces the ability of some artists to get their (perhaps more authentic) work before and accepted by the broader public.  Quoting Lauren Michelle Jackson’s brief article “When We Talk About Cultural Appropriation, We Should Be Talking About Power”:    

[Most] discussions about appropriation have been limited to debates about freedom and choice, when [we] should be [dissecting] power.  The act of cultural transport is not in itself an ethical dilemma.  Appropriation can often be a means of social and political repair….  And yet.  When the powerful appropriate from the oppressed, society’s imbalances are exacerbated and inequalities prolonged.

Art production should certainly celebrate and question the influences on the artist:  how could it not? However, when the borrowing is from – and especially in – the voices, images, or styles of others, those others and their paths need to be acknowledged in ways that lead the listener, viewer, or reader to seek their work and their stories.

(Cross) cultural appropriation in the arts, 3

The arguments favoring versus condemning cross-cultural appropriation grow from very different conceptions of art, artists, and cultures.  Legal scholar Rosemary Coombe [1993] has identified two seemingly opposing bases for the defense of and arguments against intangible cross-cultural appropriation, which she calls “possessive individualism” versus “cultural essentialism.”  

  “Possessive individualism” is the Western Romantic ideal of the artist (writer, composer, choreographer) who takes all ideas to which “he” has been exposed, and through force of will, discernment, and creativity brings forth a new work.  If the work becomes highly regarded, it is a result of “his” genius.

                   “Cultural essentialism” implies that each person belongs to a single cultural tradition from which that person draws most of their identity or “voice,” and that the strength of their identity, the integrity of their voice, is diminished when others use elements of that tradition in their own voices.  It relies on the equally Romantic ideal of a homogeneous “people” or “culture” which jointly create and own artworks, stories, and styles. 

 There are important reasons why members of less-dominant groups (and I don’t necessarily mean ethnic minorities – this could pertain to women in our broader current culture) may use themes or styles from the dominant culture without causing harm.  The most fundamental is this:  The dominant culture is promulgated broadly – in some cases, has been forced on Native Americans and Australians, or on Africans brought to North America as slaves – and members of these less-dominant groups also belong to or “own” elements of the dominant culture.

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Coombe, R.J.  1993.  The properties of culture and the politics of possessing identity: Native claims in the cultural appropriation controversy.  Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 6(2): 249-286.