Michael McConnell

Checked out Michael McConnell's website after being very taken with his cover art for the new Blueflowers album. Thought I'd pass along the link to anyone interested.

http://web.mac.com/mgmcconnell/Site/Welcome.html

DVD Review: Gauguin: Maker of Myth

This article was first published at Blogcritics

If, like me, your introduction to the artist Paul Gauguin was the 1919 novel based on his life by W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, which focused on the morality of the artist's mid life decision to change careers, abandon his wife and children and pursue his vision of art, you may find that the National Gallery of Art's documentary, Gauguin: Maker of Myth fails to deal with the central question raised by the man's life. It is not that the film fails to talk about the crucial act of the man's life, it could hardly do that. It is simply that it never gets at the ethical issue. It is discussed as an aesthetic question. Gauguin in pursuit of an aesthetic ideal of purity walked away from what many if not most people would have considered his more fundamental obligations. Rather than dealing with the conflict between ethics and aesthetics, the film simply acknowledges the decision, explains its aesthetic basis and goes on to illustrate the results.

It is as though success justifies the act. That Gauguin, in fact, went on to produce universally acknowledged great works of art seems from the point of view of the filmmakers to justify his choice, and perhaps it does. Nevertheless, it does seem to be a decision that warrants greater scrutiny. What if it had turned out that he never produced anything of value? Would his choice then be justified? Indeed, even if it is true that he has produced great art, is that justification for his act? Do aesthetic values outweigh moral obligations? These are significant questions raised by Gauguin's life, moreover they are interesting questions; unfortunately they are questions this film really never asks. It simply reports the fact and moves on from there.

Given that caveat, the half hour documentary does an excellent job exploring Gauguin's aesthetics. It points to his desire to go beyond naturalism, his passion for vibrant color, his enchantment with the primitive closeness to nature. It points out his debt to the tradition of the noble savage, and details his search for the essential truths obscured by civilization first to the coast of Brittany and finally to the island of Tahiti. It analyzes and explains the various artistic influences on his work. And everything is illustrated with wonderfully detailed reproductions of the artist's work. Whether his many self portraits or his famous paintings of Tahitian natives, the film is filled with examples of the man's greatness. While the documentary does give the basic information about Gauguin's life, it really devotes its attention to his work. And since it could be argued that it is only because of the work that we are interested in him in the first place, this makes sense.

The DVD is narrated by Willem Dafoe. Alfred Molina does the voice of Gauguin in several readings from the artist. It is interesting that unlike many documentaries, there is no reliance on talking heads. Academics and art historians are conspicuous by their absence. It is not that the film lacks scholarly credibility; it is simply that the scholarship has been integrated into the narrative.

Bonus material is limited. There is a short film about folk traditions in modern Brittany which includes some of the painter's work for comparison. There are some young women in 19th century costume and a bagpiper, but the film itself lasts only a few minutes and really adds little to the understanding of either the painter or the locale. There is also a gallery of the artist's work, which provides a nice overview of the art.

DVD Review: All About Prints

Back in the day the stereotypical image associated with artistic prints was more than likely that of the rich old roué inviting the naïve young object of his less than honorable intentions to see his etchings. It is a comic image which is very much given the lie by Christopher Noey's new documentary, All About Prints, available on DVD for The Print Research Foundation. Indeed, it is perhaps the central thesis of the film that the essential unifying characteristic of the various forms grouped together in the generic category of print is the democratic appeal of these forms in terms of both their audiences and their messages.

The various print processes gave the artist the ability to replicate his artistic vision over and over again, and since these prints could be produced in multiple copies, they could be made available to many more people. Since they could be produced more economically, they could be made available more cheaply over a wider range of social strata. Art need not cater solely to the wealthy patrons and the upper classes. Moreover as print processes changed and expanded, as new processes developed, they became easier to use, requiring less technical expertise on the part of the artist and assuring that the works could reach ever greater masses.
Expanding audiences, new audiences were more willing to look favorably on new ideas expressed in new ways. They were excited by new ways to look at the celebrity culture as depicted in an Andy Warhol silk screen of a Marilyn Monroe. They were open to Roy Lichtenstein's comic strip panel lithographs. They were not frightened by the revolutionary presentation of working men and women, of the proletariat, in the work of radical Mexican artists like Jose Orozco and Diego Rivera.

While this democratization of the artistic subject matter can be most clearly seen in the twentieth century, it is evident as well in the work of earlier artists. Although not necessarily all discussed in the DVD, one thinks of the engravings of William Hogarth in England; the poster art of Henri Toulouse Lautrec in France, and Hablot Knight Browne's illustrations for Dickens. Prints of all kinds were making great art about the people, often for the people, as well as by the people.

The DVD includes clear explanations of the various processes by which each of the different print genres are produced. These are delivered with authority by Antony Griffiths, the Keeper of Prints at the British Museum in London. For example, woodcuts, the earliest of the print genres, are produced by gouging out a block of wood to leave a relief image which will form the surface to be printed. This surface is covered with ink and that image is transferred to the paper. Etchings, on the other hand, are produced by covering a copper plate with wax and using a steel needle to draw an image through the wax. An acid bath is used to eat away the exposed needle lines. These are then coated with ink and used to print the image. Similar explanations are given for all of the print techniques. The DVD menu conveniently offers a menu to allow the viewer to play individual sections devoted to each of the more important print genres.

Interviews with contemporary artists involved in print creation as well as film footage of earlier artists are complemented by art historians, collectors, and gallery owners. Among those providing commentary are artists Will Barnet, Joanne Greenbaum and Donald Sultan; David Kiehl, Curator of Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Deborah Wye, Chief Curator of Prints at MOMA. There are auctioneers thrilled over the price for a Hopper print fetched at an auction at Christies. There is a gallery owner discussing the importance of Paul Revere's Boston Massacre engraving. There is artist Kiki Smith explaining how she really didn't quite know what she was doing when she made her first print. And not only prints, there is footage of Jackson Pollock tossing paint and Diego Rivera painting murals. Still the glory of the film is the prints: beautifully photographed, it provides high definition views of the work of a litany of the great print makers: Durer and Rembrandt, Whistler and Picasso, Hopper and Rauschenberg, to name a few.

At 54 minutes the film is an ideal introduction to a wide variety of artistic genres, a cornucopia of styles and a bevy of major artists of all types. It is by no means an exhaustive study. It was not meant to be one. It is a film to whet the appetite. It is a film that will send you to the library, to the museum, to your local gallery. It is a film that will get you looking for more. A short excerpt is available at the All About Prrints website.

Mailer on Picasso

I picked up Mailer's book on Picasso at Half Price Books for $3. Half Price Books' clearance section is always good for three or four bargains. Mailer was a steal, if only for all the photos and color plates (although they were probably the best part of the book when push come to shove). Mailer's art criticsm tends toward the fanciful flight school.

As far as the details of the painter's early life are concerned, Mailer does a lot of lengthy quoting from contemporary sources and modern critics. While contemporary accounts are intersting, they aren't always very reliable.

Book Review: How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall

Some novelists preach and pontificate about life and art. They speak directly and with assurance. Some novelists explore and imply. They speak indirectly. They speak through metaphor and suggestion. As the poet Robert Browning says, they "do the thing shall breed the thought." How to Paint a Dead Man is a novel that does the thing that breeds the thought. It is a complex book that teases the reader from page to page with the promise of great truths, and when it delivers those truths, it does so with the ambiguity to which all great thought should be entitled.

Sarah Hall weaves together what at first appear to be four very separate stories. They seem to have very little to do with one another. They are narrated through different points of view. They take place in two different countries, England and Italy. Each of the four is set in a different time period. Only gradually, is the reader made aware of connections between the stories. The speaker in one turns out to be the daughter of another. An Italian still life painter who narrates one story tutors a grade school class in painting, and the central figure in another is one of his students. In the end it turns out that there are relations between the characters in all of the stories.

More importantly, all the central figures are, in one way or another, artists. An interviewer questioning the author about the fact that two of the characters were artists provoked her to protest that, in fact, all of the central figures were artists. Two of them, the interviewer's artists, are painters, one, Giorgio, of still lives; the other Peter Caldicutt, a landscape painter. But Hall admonishes, of the other two, Susan Caldicutt is a photographer, and Annette Tambroni is a flower arranger.

"The Mirror Crisis," which begins the novel is narrated in the second person, an unusual point of view to say the least, and in the voice of Susan Caldicutt. She is a fraternal twin, and she has just learned that her brother has been killed in a traffic accident. Besides, being a promising photographer, she is also a curator working in a London art gallery. Her brother's death is devastating, not only as one would expect any death of a family member to be, but because they have as twins been two parts of whole. His death in some sense destroys her as well. One might be forgiven for thinking of Madeline and Roderick Usher.

"Translated From the Bottle Journals" is a first person account of Giorgio an Italian painter modeled on the painter Giorgio Morandi. He is dying of cancer as he tries to complete a last painting, a still life arrangement of bottles. He is very much concerned with explaining the relationship between his art and life, to make clear that still life, is still life—keeping in mind that still has more than one meaning. "The Fool on the Hill" is told in the third person from the point of view of landscape painter, Peter Caldicutt, Susan's father. He comes from a working class background and is fond of inventing a Bohemian past for himself, especially for his children. He couple this with a continuing flaunting of convention.

The last of the four interwoven threads is "The Divine Vision of Annette Tambroni." It is narrated in the third person in the voice of Annette, a young blind girl who lives with her mother, two brothers, and an uncle and sells flowers in the village market. Although sightless, her other senses have developed to the point where she is quite capable of "seeing," seeing especially that which may not be visible to those with sight. This is no doubt the divinity of her vision. One is invited to remember all Annette's literary forbears who found in blindness the ability to see.

These characters and their stories are the bones of the novel. The heart is in their thoughts and emotions as they struggle to understand themselves and their relation to the other, to deal with the essential isolation of each individual: "Inside solitude people see the many compartments of unhappiness, like the comb of a pomegranate." Indeed, objects speak more clearly to these people than do other people. Giorgio maintains that only when he can make Peter understand "the timeless gifts of nature morte," will he begin to understand "living art." Examples of nature morte" are the objects in still life paintings. Peter finds that the rocks on the mountains are alive; he wonders if they are out to get him. Objects begin to speak to the blind Annette.

Truth is in the object. When people talk, too often truth disappears in the noise, so that even when they mean to tell the truth no one can hear it. Peter has told so many tall tales of his younger days, that when he tries to give Susan one of Giorgio's bottles, she won't believe it is really his. When he needs help, no one can hear his cries. Annette's mother cannot protect her with constant admonishments to be careful. Annette finds it impossible to explain her fears about the beast she feels around her.

On the other hand: "The kestrel achieves perfection in stillness."

Still, one may not want to lay such a heavy burden on art and the artist. This is perhaps the significance of the novel's title. How to Paint a Dead Man comes from The Craftsman's Handbook by Cennino d'Andrea Cennini where he gives the aspiring artist instructions on how to paint a dead man. Giorgio parses this passage: "I have often wondered if the condition of death is perhaps less grave to the human anatomy than physical injuries. For in death there is release from suffering. Sadly, the master craftsman is unable to instruct us in the healing of wounds."

The Darker Side of Light Exhibit at National Gallery of Art

"The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850-1900" which opened at the National Gallery of Art in October will be running until the middle of January. Then it will move to Chicago in February where it will run through June. It had appeared in Los Angeles prior to arriving in Washington, DC. The exhibition highlights prints and drawings emphasizing the idea of privacy both as a subject for art and a model for individual collectors in contrast to the more public focus of the Impressionist aesthetic which arguably dominated the period. The fact that most of the work is in black and white as opposed to the vibrant color characteristic of Impressionism adds another layer of meaning to the adjective "darker."

There is a ten minute video which gives a sweeping overview of the work in the exhibition available at the National Gallery web site. It is also available as a podcast at iTunes. While the narration provided by curator, Peter Parshall, is careful to develop the theme of interiority which is the exhibition's focus, it is not always as informative about the artists or the specific work. Artists are not always indentified, and since many of them are not very well known, some discussion of their lives would have been useful for the less knowledgeable among us. Moreover, he doesn't always identify the genre of the work shown either. What he does provide, and provide very effectively, is a nice explanation of the work's relationship to the theme of the exhibition. His descriptions of the content of the piece are especially helpful for viewers watching on the small iPod screen, where the images are sometimes not as clear as they might be.

The most extensive analysis comes at the end of the video in a discussion of a series of etchings entitled "A Glove" by the German artist, Max Klinger. In the first of the series, a young man (seemingly a self portrait) finds a glove dropped by a woman at a skating rink. The glove then becomes a fetish that appears in various forms in each of the succeeding etchings. Parshall sees the series as a kind of pre-Freudian explication of the force of the fetish. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the series is "a strange parable of a hapless young man and his obsessive involvement with a woman’s elbow-length glove."

Since the video only runs a little over ten minutes, it is hard to carp about the amount of information it gives the viewer, still the kind of analysis devoted to Klinger's work has to leave you wishing that it had been done for some of the other work and some of the other artists as well. Still, something is better than nothing, and there is always the internet.