Madness and Genius

 

Vincent Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society by Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was a French surrealist writer and actor. Artaud may be one of the most famous mad artists of the twentieth century. In this strange, short book, he writes about a mad artist of the nineteenth century: Vincent Van Gogh, who is (of course) much more famous than Artaud. 

Artaud’s view is that Van Gogh’s doctors, especially Dr. Gachet, were monsters who hated Van Gogh and did all they could to destroy his creativity. This experience Artaud says that he shared with Van Gogh — his own doctors in the asylums where he was confined also tried to convince him to renounce his madness, which he equates with his creativity. Madness and genius: the constant duo from the Romantic era returns with the iconoclastic surrealists. It’s a challenging book for a boringly sane person like me to read. 

Some Van Gogh Paintings Discussed by Artaud

Portrait of Dr. Gachet. Biographies of Van Gogh usually report a cordial relationship between
Van Gogh and the doctor. Artaud portrays this connection in a totally different light, clearly based
on his own personal experience with doctors who treated his mental illness.

“Wheatfield with Crows” — one of the last paintings by Van Gogh, painted just days before his suicide.
Artaud had seen Van Gogh's paintings at a major art exhibit in Paris in 1946.

“The Bedroom” — Van Gogh’s room in his home in Arles. One of three versions he made of this scene.

“Gauguin’s Chair” — Artaud was fascinated by the candle. He finds this painting more expressive
than all the famous tragedies written since the Greeks.

Artaud writes:

“The simple motif of a lit candlestick on a straw armchair with a purplish frame says much more in Van Gogh's creation than the whole series of Greek tragedies, or the dramas of Cyril Tourneur, Webster or Ford... . Without literature, I saw the figure of Van Gogh, red with blood in the explosion of his landscapes, come to me, KOHAN, TAVER, TINSUR, yet in a blaze, in a bombardment, in a burst, avengers of that millstone that poor, mad Van Gogh wore around his neck all his life. The millstone of painting without knowing why. For it's not for this world, it's never for this earth that we've all always worked, struggled, bellowed the horror of hunger, misery, hatred, scandal and disgust, that we've all been poisoned, although by them we've all been bewitched, and that we've finally committed suicide, for aren't we all, like poor Van Gogh himself, suicides of society!” (p. 26, edited translation by Deepl.)

I'm a fan of the Surrealist and Dadaist painters who worked in Paris in era between the two World Wars. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, and others fascinate me. The Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton was the interesting call to creativity of that era, and it intrigues me. On the other hand, I've always found Artaud rather strange and unapproachable: in contrast, this essay on Van Gogh resonates with me.

Review © 2024 mae sander

 

An Interlude with Mona Lisa

When things look bad, it's time to see what crazy new Mona Lisa parodies are being created these days. If you are a long-term reader of this blog, you know that for many years, I have been collecting Mona Lisa items, including advertisements, post cards, "decorative" items, and images of Mona on buildings or businesses. 

It's time for a new romp through the internet. You probably also know that my hobby is very DaDa because I don't much bother with anything but the image. Like who made it? Not my thing. 

To start, you can see a Mona Lisa Halloween image that I found by searching randomly. SO this post is also jump-starting my various Halloween posts that I plan to do in the next 10 days, along with sampling whatever trick-or-treat candy I buy.

This image is said to have put Columbus, Ohio, on the map.
Here in Ann Arbor, I've heard a rumor that there's also a football team in Columbus.

Mona Lisa as household decor. Not very imaginative!

A little more DaDa?

Crop Art from the Minnesota State Fair. Also called seed art. Every dot is a seed.

Mona Lisa on a cafe latte is a genre in itself.

AI and Mona Lisa

Looking for novelty in Mona Lisa "art" I tried to see what has been done with AI. As far as I can tell, the insipid, stupid-looking, and very conventional faces that AI generates offer a lesson in what's great and original about Leonardo's creation. Obviously, I can't tell if the defects I perceived are a result of user action or of the software itself. Here's the least-awful example -- at least it has a new focus: Indian food.

Created with AI: Mona Lisa eats Indian food. AI has a long way to go when it comes to Mona Lisa.

The Original DaDa Mona

Marcel Duchamp, the originator of much that is DaDa,
created this image in 1919. (Explanation Here)

At the Detroit Institute of Arts

Van Gogh in America

Waiting in line for the fabulous Van Gogh Exhibit at
the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Huge murals of famous Van Gogh paintings are shown on the way into the exhibit.
Attendance on Saturday was at capacity, but the crowds were controlled by timed admissions.

The selection of paintings and drawings was superb.

We were thrilled by the extensive assembly of works by Van Gogh in “Van Gogh in America.” According to the organizers: 

“Van Gogh in America is the first exhibition dedicated to the introduction and early reception of Vincent van Gogh’s art in the United States. The exhibition displays 78 works by Van Gogh, illustrating the efforts made by early promoters of his art—including the artist’s family—in America”

The DIA was the first American Museum to acquire a Van Gogh painting for its collection: exactly 100 years ago. In 1922, the city of Detroit purchased a self-portrait that he had painted in 1887. By this time, Van Gogh was widely appreciated in Europe, and his works were highly valued. However, the American art establishment was very slow to appreciate his incredible genius. 

The exhibit documents how a few black-and-white newspaper articles and then the 1913 Armory Show in New York displayed some of his paintings, which didn’t find purchasers. A later exhibit, organized by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and others also featured Van Gogh paintings. Several of the works from this show by other artists such as Frank Stella and Paul Cézanne were in the DIA exhibit in addition to the Van Goghs,

The history of how the American museum-going public came to love Van Gogh and how other museums and other exhibits made his work more widely available was the main subject of the exhibit. The placards on the walls and other documentation also show how the legend of Van Gogh’s supposedly tormented life took over the public imagination, despite evidence that he was a thoughtful and painstaking draftsman and artist. This unusual approach to art history makes this exhibit different from most art exhibits I have seen, and I found it wonderful and fascinating.

Other Famous Works in the DIA Collection

We love going to the DIA, and were delighted to return after three years, as the pandemic has kept us away. Here are two works that we saw today, among those that we have enjoyed returning to over and over. The museum is less than an hour’s drive from our home, so we have frequented its galleries throughout the time we have lived here.

 

Diego Rivera’s interpretations of Detroit Industry are among his most impressive murals.

The DIA also has a remarkable collection of puppets from the early 20th century.
This is a puppet of Cleopatra by Martin T. Stevens and Olga Stevens.
Only a few puppets are displayed at any one time, so Cleopatra was new to me.

Review © 2022 mae sander.

 

Ai Weiwei

"Never forget that under a totalitarian system cruelty and absurdity go hand in hand." Ai Weiwei. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (p. 137)

"In China, if you try to understand your country, it’s enough to put you on a collision course with the law." (p. 147)

"Young people in China today have no knowledge at all of the student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and if they knew they might not even care, for they learn submission before they have developed an ability to raise doubts and challenge assumptions." (p. 204)

"It’s a mistake to always take me seriously. (p. 217)

Ai Weiwei's story begins with his father's birth. It's a story of China for just over 100 years, during unimaginable changes from rule by the Emperor to rule by Mao to the totalitarian state of the present. It's both a personal and an intellectual history, set against the background of war, conquest, persecution, and Ai Weiwei's personal development as a startling avant-garde artist in our own time.

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows on one level is the story of just two people: Ai Weiwei and his father, Ai Quing, who was a popular poet. In 1938, Ai Qing wrote “Toward the Sun,” a lyric poem about north China, where he had witnessed "both China’s miseries and its people’s stubborn vitality. It soon became a staple at poetry readings; as evening fell, students would read it aloud around a bonfire, the light illuminating their faces, and the poem’s passion and confidence would warm their hearts." (Ai Weiwei. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, p. 59). 

Before reading Ai Weiwei's memoir, I had virtually no knowledge of Ai Quing, and only broad outlines about the struggle of the Communist party led by Mao to defeat the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. His father's life is a study of ups and downs, including rejection in China and fame outside of China (for example, a friendship with Chilean poet Pablo Neruda). Sometimes he was an acknowledged leader, at other times, because he stuck to his principles, he was sent to prison camps or far-flung exile. Here is how his life began.

"In 1910, the year my father was born, my grandfather had just turned twenty-one. The Qing dynasty was nearing the end of its 266-year rule, while in Russia the fall of the czars and the advent of the Soviet regime were just seven years away. It was the year that Tolstoy and Mark Twain died, the year that Edison invented talkies in faraway New Jersey. In Xiangtan, in Hunan, seventeen-year-old Mao Zedong was still in school; his first wife, selected for him by his parents in an arranged marriage, died a month before my father was born. But Fantianjiang, like so many other Chinese villages, slumbered on, unremarkable and anonymous." (Ai Weiwei. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, p. 17).  

Ai Weiwei's father's status varied from early recognition as a national poet in Mao's inner circle to suffering in the a rehabilitation camp for dissidents and other intellectuals in the Cultural Revolution. I really enjoyed reading about his first meeting in 1941, where he has an informal meal with Mao in his army camp, long before his military success. Near the start of the book, we read about one of the worst times: an account of the starvation that was the fate of the inhabitants of the rehabilitation camp many years later.

"In this era of dreary routine and material scarcity, the kitchen served as the focus of people’s imagination, even if little changed from one day to the next. Each morning the cook would mix cornmeal with warm water and place the dough into a meter-square cage drawer, then stack five such drawers inside an iron pot and steam them for thirty minutes. When the lid was lifted off, the whole kitchen would fill with steam, and the cook would carve up the corn bread vertically and horizontally, each square piece weighing two hundred grams. To show his impartiality, he would weigh the blocks publicly. This same corn bread would be served from the first day of the year to the last, except on May 1 (International Workers’ Day) and October 1 (National Day), when the corn bread would acquire a thin red layer, made up of sugar and possibly jujubes. If someone was lucky enough to find a jujube in their corn bread, this would always stir some excitement. The company had large expanses of cornfields, but we never once had fresh cornmeal to eat, only 'war-relief grain' that had been in storage for goodness knows how long: it scraped your throat roughly as you swallowed, and reeked of mold and gasoline." (p. 12).

Eventually, Mao had no more use for intellectuals: "the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957... marked the end of intellectuals as a force in society. From that time on, Chinese intellectuals were confined to a marginal position, and they have been there ever since." And it still burdens the freedom of thought of Ai Weiwei: "Ideological cleansing, I would note, exists not only under totalitarian regimes—it is present also, in a different form, in liberal Western democracies." (p. 83-84)

After describing the experiences of his father, Ai Weiwei continues with his own story. He was born in 1957, when his father was 47 years old, and he lived in exile with his father for a major part of his childhood and youth. Wanting a broader education the young Ai Weiwei managed to get to Philadelphia to go to college. Here, at the famous art museum, he encountered one of my favorite artists: Marcel Duchamp, who along with Andy Warhol became a critical influence on his development as a conceptual and otherwise off-beat artist -- for me one of the most fascinating aspects of the book.

"In one of the galleries, a bicycle wheel was mounted on a wooden stool; two large panels of glass, one above the other, each splintered and cracked, invited you to contemplate the relationship between the “Bride’s Domain” above and the “Bachelor Machine” below." (p. 168).

 

Ai Weiwei's description of his development as an artist and his view of art make up a major part of the rest of the book. He explains:

"Art had long been a consumption commodity, a decoration catering to the tastes of the rich, and under commercial pressures it was bound to degenerate. As artworks rise in monetary value, their spiritual dimension declines, and art is reduced to little more than an investment asset, a financial product." (p. 176). 

Along with his self-invention as a political activist as well as being an artist, he used provocative actions (or "little acts of mischief") as a way of public expression, influenced by Warhol and others including Alan Ginsberg. Adapting to the modern age, Ai Weiwei became a blogger with a huge following; when the Chinese authorities shut down and destroyed his blog,  he became a Twitter user, always advancing his views of art and political issues with bravery in the face of the repressive Chinese authorities.

Finally, the government subjected Ai Weiwei to 80 days of imprisonment with brutal policemen constantly questioning and badgering him for 24 hours a day. After his release he was not allowed to leave the country for several years, and his artistic endeavors were disrupted. He cultivated attention to his mistreatment in a variety of ways, and was finally released. He has now moved to Europe, where he continues to be a productive artist.

The memoir is illustrated with sketches by the author. The bicycle basket action was photographed
every day, and posted on Instagram as a symbol of his lost freedom.

An Exhibit of Ai Weiwei's Art

A number of very famous works by Ai Weiwei have been exhibited in well-known museums; in particular at the Tate Modern in London, he spread 102.5 million ceramic sunflower seeds on the floor of the great hall. These realistic seeds were created under his direction by a ceramic studio in China. They were in part a memorial to the thousands of children who died in the poorly built schools that crumbled in the earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, but also they meant much more.

While I didn't see the more famous exhibits, in 2017, I did see a beautiful and exciting exhibit of Ai Weiwei's sculptures at the Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In 1995, one of Ai Weiwei's public actions was to drop and shatter a Han-Dynasty urn.
This was the subject of one room of the exhibit in Grand Rapids.

Among Ai Weiwei's very political activities was a campaign to remember by name the thousands
of children who died in the earthquake in 2008 because of poorly-built schools. 
The authorities did everything they could to stop him! This sculpture, titled "Porcelain Rebar,"
recalls the tangled metal rebar visible in the rubble of the schools.

Review and photos © 2017, 2022, mae sander.

Winter Art and Poetry

It's winter now. Where I live it's cold, with a little bit of snow on lawns and roofs. Much of the country is in considerably worse shape -- the worst being the Colorado town that burned to cinders just before the snow fell. We have to stay in, like a large number of people, but our house is warm, our food supplies are fine, and we have nothing to complain about. We are the fortunate ones in this dreary time. 

I was thinking about how poets and artists have given us such enjoyable creations that express something akin to what I'm experiencing. First, a few of my favorite winter-theme art works:

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, "Hunters in the Snow (Winter)," 1567.

Hiroshige, "Mt. Fuji and Mt. Ashigara in Snow from Numazu
in Clear Weather after a Snowfall," 1855

August Rodin, "The Burghers of Calais," 1884-1895.

Renee Magritte, "Golconde," 1953

Marcel Duchamp "In Advance of the Broken Arm."

The last piece of art above is a "Ready Made" by that joker Marcel Duchamp, from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, dated 1964. Duchamp "produced" quite a few of these, so I've seen them in several museums (also on my back porch, but unsigned). From the MOMA website: "Duchamp purchased the first version of this work in a hardware store in 1915, signed and dated the shovel, and hung it on display from his studio ceiling." (source) I'm a big fan of Duchamp and his DaDa style.

Finally, I found a poem that I had never read before that seems very apt for this season:

 Lines for Winter

BY MARK STRAND

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself—

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back

and you find yourself

where you will be at the end,

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love what you are.

Poem from Poetry Foundation.

Washington: the Hirshhorn Museum

 

LAURIE ANDERSON: THE WEATHER

SEP 24, 2021–JUL 31, 2022

We loved the special exhibit by multi-media artist Laurie Anderson.
It is very hard to describe, but my favorite was a huge room with walls and floor all
painted with black and white images, quotations, and observations.

... and cake.

It's been a long time since I was able to visit a museum with a fascinating contemporary art exhibit. I've been so quarantined! So this was a wonderful treat, going with Len and Evelyn for just a few hours and no pressure. The Capitol Mall was crowded but fortunately not many people were in the Hirshhorn this morning.

We also viewed an exhibit of works by one of my favorite early 20th century
artists, Marcel Duchamp. These are two portraits of the artist.

The Hirshhorn Museum is in a very interesting building, which is now under
construction and thus covered with huge draperies.

Blog post © 2021 mae sander.

Artists and Writers

This is not a cookbook.

Zone out. Open The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook. Open it to any page, or begin at the beginning. Read a brief food memory from the life of an author, a poet, a photographer, an installation artist, or another creative person. On the next page, you will read a few paragraphs from a completely different personality in a different world. Also, you will see a recipe from each one. Some of these memoir writers describe much-loved dishes and happy food moments. Some are passionate about particular dishes. Others don't actually love food, or they have mixed feelings about the dishes they have eaten or about childhood experiences. 

Zone out, read on to the next vignette, be in the moment. Don't worry if the foods are unfamiliar or the recipes very conventional or very weird. Don't worry about whether you have heard of a particular writer or seen the work of a particular artist: or even whether you have met them or heard them give a reading. Some of the obscure memoirists present more vivid food stories than the more famous ones. Just be in the moment.

When I first flipped through the pages of my new copy of The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook by Natalie Eve Garrett, I thought it looked overwhelming -- incoherent, diffuse, unfocused, unapproachable. (It was published 2016 and I've been meaning to read it every since, and I thank the blogger Eliot who jogged me into buying it!) At first, I felt jerked around by the change from one point of view to another. The points of view ranged from super-serious to totally satirical, and the recipes were the same way. Every writer had a different approach to giving a recipe. Some were enormously labor-intensive, some full of pre-made ingredients. The range included recipes that sounded delicious, disgusting, nostalgic, or even pathetic. 

The writers and the accomplishments that qualified them varied widely, including some that I had heard of, others completely unfamiliar. In the case of one author, I not only had met him, but even had dinner with him once; however, he certainly wasn't writing about the food we ate together! Another writer, whom I never heard of, wrote about Cafe Pasqual in Santa Fe --a place I ate once and loved, and then went back a few years later and was very disappointed. Author Ruth Ozeki wrote about the experience that she transformed into her wonderful first novel My Year of Meats. As I read through the vignettes, I enjoyed the constant changes in locale: rural Puerto Rico; Knoxville, Tennessee; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; various neighborhoods of New York City; Calcutta, India; urban Iran during wartime; Vietnam as experienced by a city child and by an American soldier; and many others.

I had to zone out. I had to empty my mind and just read one after another. Then I liked it.

Authenticity is of course a recurring theme of the many writers who come from such a variety of places. Peter Ho Davies writes "I like to think the dishes I'm eating are authentic" but then identifies one of his real food identities as "U.S.Chinese food... popular with and produced for a largely non-Chinese clientele of hungry white prospectors and their hangers-on" in the early days, and continues to evolve (p. 114). Another writer discusses the question of authenticity in the context of Ethiopian food, and quotes Ficre, an Eritrean chef:

"Tricky word, authentic.... Tricky idea. Food ideas move around the world very quickly today, and if you went to Eritrea today, you'd find American touches here and there. There are thousands of Eritreans living in the United States, and when they go home, they take new food ideas with them. For us, that's no more foreign than pasta once was." (p.112)

 Read The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook. You can get lost in its wild variety.

 

In 1961, a group of editors compiled the first Artists' and Writers' Cookbook, a volume I would love to see. Despite the somewhat high price tag, I've ordered a copy, and will report back when I have it in hand.  (A few less-than-astronomically priced copies have suddenly become available.)

Here's the publisher's description:

An illustrated cookbook with 19th-century engravings and original drawings by Marcel Duchamp, Robert Osborn, and Alexandre Istrati. It features 220 recipes and 30 courses by 55 painters, 61 novelists, 15 sculptors, and 19 poets, including such luminaries as Man Ray, John Keats, Marcel Duchamp, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Graves, Harper Lee, Irving Stone, William Styron, and Georges Simenon. The diverse contributors take the assignment with various degrees of seriousness, some sharing their recipes in earnest and others using the cookbook as a canvas for wit and creative deviation, but all having invariable and obvious fun with the project. 

Review © 2021 mae sander.

Bansky and the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa parodies have been my hobby for many years. It's been a while since I web searched to see how the genre was being advanced. Today I randomly started a search about such works of the street artist Bansky, who has used the Mona Lisa image in several famous ways. The bazooka-toting Mona Lisa in the second row of this google image collage is probably the best known of his Mona Lisa works.

An article titled "Five of Banksy’s most infamous pranks" described how Bansky "saw it fitting to put his version of the painting up in Paris’s Louvre. The Banksy twist was that his version had a yellow, acid-smiley face, and he dubbed it 'Mona Lisa Smile.'" (link)

Bansky's Mona Lisa Smile. 

A notorious Bansky graffiti.

Another Bansky Mona Lisa.

Parodies of Parodies: Several other artists have actually made parodies of the more famous Bansky parodies. I am extra fond of the surrealist and dada aspects of all Mona Lisa imitators and satirists, maybe starting with Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. So I love these:

I"m not sure if Bansky himself did this or if it's a parody!

Whatever.

Of course someone had to do this.

All these images are from web searches,  used as part of my commentary,

but the blog post is by mae sander for maefood dot blog spot dot com.