Monthly Archives: September 2008

Barry Johnson, Environment, General, Visual Art

Monday scattered like the New Carissa

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With the late September sun blazing and the pinot noir grapes sweetening by the minute, Scatter attempts to move its attention from dreams of wine-y complexity to almost anything else.

1. The New Carissa. We met the news that the salvage of the stern of the New Carissa on the coast near Coos Bay was nearly complete with some unexpected sadness. Remove it as though it never happened? The derelict New Carissa was a formidable adversary, defying our best efforts to… well, do anything with her that we wanted. Just the saga of the bow section — towed (with great difficulty) out to sea for burial, it breaks free in a storm and re-grounds near Waldport, gets a tow back out to deep water where it is blasted by a destroyer and sunk by a torpedo into 10,000 feet of water — is incredible. It would have all been completely comic if oil from the ship hadn’t leaked and destroyed marine wildlife nearby. Put us in the camp with those who would have left a hunk of stern on the beach, not as a tourist attraction, mind you, which would have been silly, but as a monument to our folly, a permanent metaphor. (That’s Henk Pander’s Wreck of the New Carissa, above.)

2. WaMu, Seattle misses you. We linked you to Regina Hackett’s story in the Seattle P-I that detailed some worry about the fate of Washington Mutual and the building-sharing agreement it has with the Seattle Art Museum. Now, of course, WaMu has turned into a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase & Co. and her new story with John Marshall talks about the worry at many other Seattle arts organizations that WaMu’s extensive arts funding will diminish or disappear. This is just the direct fallout from the sub-prime loan mess; we have yet to see how much deeper this blade will cut.

3. Mark Rothko at the Tate. Scatter follows Rothko pretty closely — he went to Lincoln High School, after all, and was a friend of Portland painters Carl and Hilda Morris — even though we sometimes don’t know what to make of him. Or maybe it’s that we think different things about him at different times. In any case, the show of his late work (1958 when he famously withdrew from his Four Seasons restaurant commission in the Seagram buildling until his suicide in 1970) at the Tate Modern in London is drawing similarly mixed responses. We recommend a reading of Laura Cumming’s review in the Observer, which describes an exhausted Rothko and locates the figurative elements threatening to bust loose in all the abstraction. Rachel Campbell-Johnston in the London Times, however, finds something altogether different — a lighter, brighter, soaring Rothko. Let’s see: exhausted or soaring? Maybe a trip to London to sort all of this out would be in order if only the Scatter piggy bank didn’t rattle so forlornly.

Barry Johnson, Books, General

A little book biz talk — “Wild Beauty,” “Sweetheart,” “The Tsar’s Dwarf”

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Art Scatter made its way to a book “opening” Thursday night at the spiffy new p:ear digs in Old Town, which was jam-packed with fans of Terry Toedtemeier, John Laursen and the Columbia River Gorge. They will become devotees of Wild Beauty, the history of photography that Terry and John have assembled/written/curated, too, because the book is beautiful, plain and simple. Not that I’m a neutral observer. The ways I’m mobbed up here are countless — I’ve known Terry for decades, I’ve collaborated on a museum catalog with John, my wife Megan helped them get the project rolling and did various sorts of things to keep it that way, I’m fascinated by both the geological and human history of the Gorge… I could go on. But still, I like to think I’m a tough sell. Wild Beauty convinced me. You can look it over yourself at a bookstore (Oregon State University Press is the co-publisher), buy a copy through the Northwest Photography Archive online or pick one up at the Portland Art Museum, where an exhibition of photographs from the book will open on Oct. 4. It’s not cheap ($75) for a book, but it is cheap for a work of art, and that’s what it is (and produced entirely in Oregon). I’ll probably talk about it more once I get a chance to live with it for a bit.

I forgot to let you know about the publication of Art Scatter friend Chelsea Cain’s new book, Sweetheart, which continues the crime-fighting saga of Detective Archie Sheridan and his face-off with the sultry but deadly serial killer Gretchen Lowell. The serial killer thriller is usually not a genre I sample, but I scarfed up Chelsea’s first book in the series, Heartsick, even though a few early pages made me wince (a hammer, nail, ribcage, you get the picture), and now I’m launched on Number Two. Not that she needs the pub, really — the New York Times Book Review took good care of her. (Congrats, Chelsea!). Again, I’m mobbed up here… Chelsea writes a delightful column in The Oregonian that I’ve had some association with.

I’m also a fan of Hawthorne Books, which makes winsome, high-quality trade paperbacks of work by interesting writers from Portland and beyond (I wrote about Monica Drake’s Clown Girl in a post below, way below). So, I’ve also just begun The Tsar’s Dwarf by Peter H. Fogtdal, a Dane who spends time in Portland, and translated by Tiina Nunnally, who was the translator of Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow. I can already tell that I like it’s rhythms and picaresque sensibility. But again, more later, especially since its publication date isn’t until November.

General

Brett Campbell on the Halprin Happening!

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Portland music writer Brett Campbell was kind enough to develop a lengthy response in the comment section of our last (or latest) Halprin post, and we decided to give it a post of its own, accompanied by a photograph taken by his wife, CaroleZoom.

Very sneaky, Barry, trying to embarrass me into writing up an essay on City Dance by calling me out publicly. Well, it ain’t gonna work! As a full time non blockhead freelancer, I make it a point never to write except for money. Except this. Sadly, I couldn’t interest my primary national market in a story about City Dance (or another Portland phenomenon I consider equally newsworthy, Linda Johnson’s amazing South Waterfront Artists in Residence program), so I guess I won’t be writing that City Dance piece after all. But I do consider it an important and perhaps historic event in the city’s art history. The comment I overheard over and over was “I’ve lived in Portland xx years, and I’ve never been to Lovejoy Fountain / Pettygrove Park / Keller Fountain.” So in that respect, the event accomplished what Ron and Third Angle wanted: drawing Portlanders to these wonderful yet neglected public spaces. (Confession: I’ve lived a few blocks from Lovejoy Fountain for more than two years and had never been there.)

But I think it went beyond just re-energizing these spaces. Randy Gragg’s associated events (talks and lectures) used art to connect people to their city’s history. The proximity and connection to Sojourn Theater’s Built, Linda Wysong’s Backyard Conversations and the AIR project forged fascinating connections between Portland urban renewal of the 1960s and Portland urban renewal of the 2000s. I wasn’t able to attend the panel discussions, dammit — I asked Randy to consider posting a podcast or audio file — but certainly plenty of people learned a lot about the connections between architecture, dance and music as embodied in the Halprins’ relationship. Portlanders were also exposed to a vital element of our West Coast heritage: the pioneering music that emerged from the Bay Area in the 1960s. I bet plenty of listeners — 40 years ago and maybe even now — would have considered the music played at the fountains to be intolerably avant garde, but performed in that context (and brilliantly by Third Angle), it all seemed to fit. In particular, seeing Susan Smith wade into the fountain and strike the repeated chords to to Terry Riley’s landmark work In C (a piece as important to this century’s music, in its way, as the Rite of Spring or West End Blues or the Sun Sessions) while the dancers emerged and high school students played this once avant garde work and thousands looked on just brought tears to my eyes. (It still does, just remembering it, a sure sign of great art.)
Continue reading Brett Campbell on the Halprin Happening! →

Bob Hicks, Environment, Film, General, Visual Art

Thursday scatter: of foxes and hen houses, etc.

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An egg crisis is ravaging the hen house.

They’re disappearing.

And the foxes are shocked, shocked.

While the hens bemoan the loss of their little ones — several survivors have been running around crying that the sky is falling — the foxes have gathered the whole barnyard to declare that Something Must Be Done. Trust them: We Must Act Now.

The head fox has declared that the true victims are the foxes themselves, who have been cruelly deprived of their stockpile of eggs. To avert catastrophe, the foxes’ hoards must be replenished: The hens must lay 700 billion new eggs, right now. The farmer, blinking owlishly, agrees. One wise old fox, who yearns to live in the farm house, has declared that he will Suspend All Other Activities while he Helps Find a Solution. That solution will be found by foxes, and foxes alone. And the solution is that the Hens Will Provide.

Meanwhile, no omelettes this morning. And for music lovers, the rooster doesn’t much feel like crowing, either. Where’s Aesop when we need him? Where’s George Orwell?

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NEW GUY AT THE GUGGENHEIM: Those who can curate, curate. Those who can curate well, lead museums. At least, that’s the mini-trend among major museums in New York.

Following the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s appointment earlier this month of European tapestry curator Thomas P. Campbell to replace the venerated Philippe de Montebello as director, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has named Richard Armstrong, director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, as the Guggenheim‘s next director.

Like Campbell, Armstrong rose in the ranks on the strength of his curatorial qualities, not his showmanship: His specialty is contemporary art, a good fit for the Goog. And the ever-busy Carol Vogel, in her report for the New York Times, suggests that after years of expansion in Bilbao, Venice, Berlin and (coming in 2013) Abu Dhabi, Armstrong and the Guggenheim are ready to shift their focus back to New York. Another good report comes from The Art Newspaper.

Is it possible that sober financial times are bringing more prudential museum leaders? De Montebello, of course, has combined prudence, measured daring and a brilliant commitment to the art for more than 30 years at the Met, following the mercurial reign of supershowman Thomas Hoving. At the Guggenheim, Armstrong will follow high-rolling Thomas Krens. And when the Portland Art Museum‘s Hoving-like director John Buchanan headed south to take over the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the museum board replaced him with Brian Ferriso and charged Ferriso to quiet the waters and keep things on an even keel.

The question is, will an even keel fill the cruise ship with customers? Is generating excitement gauche, or is it part of what a museum is about? To what extent does a museum exist for insiders, and to what extent does it have a duty to appeal to the general public?

These are uneasy times, and leading a major — or modest — museum is no easy task. To Armstrong, Campbell, Ferriso and their compatriots, then: Good luck, be wise, balance well, take risks, and don’t forget the public.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SOMEDAY: Someday Lounge, that is. The Old Town Portland night spot and hub for interesting alternative arts has turned two and is celebrating with a bunch of events this weekend. The one that catches our eye is the premiere of Pig Roast and Tank of Fish, a documentary about Portland’s Chinatown (which is more or less where the Someday coexists) to be shown at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28. Here’s what the Lounge has to say:

Portlander Ivy Lin directed and produced Pig Roast & Tank of Fish. “I’ve always wondered why our Chinatown went from being the second largest in the U.S. to almost like a ghost town. It’s in the heart of downtown, with that beautiful gate and garden and nothing much else,” says Lin. “Earlier this year, 70 Asians showed up at a city council meeting to testify against the the siting of another homeless shelter on Block 25 in Chinatown. I was not even involved with the Chinese community then, but I was very moved and this event became the inspiration for this project.”

This documentary is the first-ever motion picture to acknowledge the history/legacy of Chinatown, Portland’s oldest neighborhood where the pioneers of many ethnic communities once called “home.” It includes some rarely seen footage of ongoing cultural/social activities behind closed doors…Chinatown is not dead!

See you there, Friends of Art Scatter.

Barry Johnson, Books, General

Bernard-Henri Levy brings some dapper French political philosophy to Portland

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Bernard-Henri Levy (BHL, as he is known in France) arrived at Powell’s last night (Tuesday) just a little late, fashionably late, actually, because he looked great in his black suit and deep purple shirt. He’s been here before, two years ago, to read from American Vertigo, his travelogue through American places and faces, and so he knew the landscape — the smallish Powell’s lecture nook packed with… well, really I have no idea, maybe “fans.” The woman sitting next to me had heard him on OPB and decided to come hear him in person. She was grading papers from a high school French class and speaking French with those around her. Which gave me pause when I first took my seat. Would BHL be lecturing in, horrors, French?

No, he would not. Accented English, yes, but confidently employed, expressive English. And what was his subject? One of his favorites since his first big book (Barbarism With a Human Face) more than 30 years ago — the problems with the Left. Of course, the problems then were much bigger than now, specifically the embrace of Stalinism, either actively or passively, by Left and Left-leaning parties and intellectuals. Now, the Left in Europe is ineffective and practically “broken,” or so it feels in France, I suspect, after the election of Sarkozy, an old friend or “buddy” of BHL’s, who appeared in BHL’s talk (and the beginning of his new book) several times.

So what’s left to criticize? BHL argued that the Left (or Liberals, in the American formulation, though Liberal doesn’t quite have the historical depth or granularity of the European Left) has abandoned many of its core principles to embrace another ideology, another Grand Narrative, that of anti-Imperialism, American Imperialism. And in dividing the world into Evil (the U.S. and Israel and their supporters) and Good (the rest of the world), the Left manages to overlook little things like the genocide in Rwanda, the bloodbath in Darfur (BHL doesn’t think it qualifies as genocide at this point), the suppression of democracy in Iran or the rights of native peoples in Ecuador. These don’t fit the Narrative.
Continue reading Bernard-Henri Levy brings some dapper French political philosophy to Portland →

General

Scatter’s got the genius fellowship blues, or not

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Art Scatter doesn’t have much to say about this year’s MacArthur genius grants, half-a-million bucks, no strings, no waiting. We usually get a bit queasy when they are announced, not because we ourselves are expecting the phone call (even Art Scatter isn’t THAT delusional) but because we fear that someone we know will be on the list, someone we can’t abide. So we are happy this year. We don’t know a soul. (We just saw The Big Lebowski again and have determined that we don’t use “abide” nearly enough, as in “The Dude abides.”)

Truth be told, I always LIKE the list, mostly people I’ve never heard of doing things that sound amazing if not impossible, a sort of scatter in its own right. This year seems heavy on the neuroscience. I have great respect for neuroscientists. I have no idea how one spends her day, of course. Peering into people’s ears with one of those ear-examiner things with a little light, except it’s a laser and they are picking up electrical activity in one lobe or another? That’s a bit like what I imagine. Or on darker days, slicing fresh brain into ultra thin slices. I started to add, “the size my mother wants her cake sliced at birthday parties.” Sorry. I’ll spare you my astro-physicist fantasies.

I did recognize a few of the fellows (that’s what we’ll be called when we are chosen: MacArthur Fellows), especially the ones in the arts. Jennifer Tipton is an amazing lighting designer — techies rule! I saw saxophonist Miguel Zenon at a two Portland Jazz Festivals (don’t get me started: bring it back!). Is he “creating an entirely new jazz language for the 21st Century” as the MacArthur people suggest? Probably not, but he can really play and his combo of Latin, African and Caribbean influences IS really interesting and listenable. We’ve already written so much about Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic who wrote “The Rest Is Noise,” that he probably thinks we are stalking him. No complaint there. I haven’t read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun about life in Nigeria after the civil war with Biafra, but the award makes me want to. And I don’t know Tara Donovan, who takes ordinary objects such as paper clips and straws and makes various sensuous shapes out of them. The photographs I’ve seen are pretty cool.

I think my favorite winner is John Ochsendorf, a structural engineer at MIT who uses the “wisdom” of ancient builders to solve contemporary engineering problems. He’s studied rope suspension bridges designed by the Incans, Romanesque church vaults and buttresses and he and his students designed England’s Pines Calyx dome, pictured above, “a robust, energy-efficient structure built from local resources using a tile vaulting system patented in the 19th century by Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino,” according to the MacArthur notes. My google-snooping suggests that this is exactly right. I think it’s important to our sense of history that we understand just how smart, just how adaptive those who came before us have been. So, well done MacArthur peeps, well done. (This is NOT sucking up!)

Barry Johnson, Dance, Environment, General

The Halprin fountain dance, one week later

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I thought I was done with the Halprin fountain “event” or “happening” or “dance” — I still can’t quite name it — that ended the Time-Based Art Festival in Portland last Sunday (that would be Sept. 14). But I keep getting flashbacks of the performance, replaying little bits in my mind, thinking about some of the music I heard. You know what that’s like: Something more than random neurons firing.

I’ve had a couple of aids in this. The first is visual. Art Scatter received a very nice email from writer Brett Campbell, who was also very taken with the Halprin happening and said he was working on an essay of his own. When he completes it, we will link to it. This is right down his alley: He’s working on Lou Harrison book and Harrison was in the middle of the San Francisco milieu of Lawrence and Ana Halprin. But as a memory igniter, Brett’s wife, photographer CaroleZoom, was actually more important, because she sent us some images of the event. Quite beautiful ones, which explain the adulatory comments I heard about the first piece of the performance choreographed by Tere Mathern — which I was unable to see (I was late, it was too crowded). So, I’ve posted those here.

And there was the thread to the original post… Randy Gragg, one of the key organizers, responded a couple of times. Carolyn Altman, who was a Portland dancer/choreographer/writer, wrote in from Georgia, where she now lives, with memories of the fountains. Dance writer Martha Ullman West got things going and left us wanting more of her eye on the dances themselves.

And realizing that I missed Martha’s eye made me understand how inadequate the description of things in the original post was/is. If I could do it over, I would try to tell you how the dancers moved, more than simply saying it was “old-style” modern dance, carving space, attending to changes in topography and water flow, operating at scales tiny and grand, how they rolled and buckled and ran, the qualities in the momentary tableaux, the muscle groups engaged and relaxed, the dancers and the way their dance personalities emerged. The music would be harder for me — help us, Brett! — fleeting, sporadic, in search of original impulses to propel it, guide it, original impulses to communicate to us.
Continue reading The Halprin fountain dance, one week later →

Bob Hicks, General

Scatter, the new generation: On the right-brain revolution

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The thing about pep rallies is, sometimes there really is something to cheer about. So it was Thursday night inside the Dolores Winningstad Theatre in downtown Portland, where a group no longer called Arts Partners gathered much of the local arts mob for a rebranding celebration — from now on, thanks to the Portland firm North, Arts Partners is The Right Brain Initiative.

What’s that mean?

For one thing, you’re going to have to finally get that right brain/left brain thing straight in your mind: left brain analytical, right brain intuitive. You can color-code it if that helps.

More importantly, it means that after many years of America’s public schools being pushed further and further into a “back to the basics” position that all too often amounts to deadening drudgery, creative thinking is pushing back. And considering the economic, cultural and environmental challenges of the 21st century, it’s pushing back just in time.

The RBI, which has been spearheaded by the Regional Arts & Cultural Council but has had lots of vital input from many other organizations and individuals (including some local government grants), has set itself a noble if daunting task — to incorporate arts programs “into the education of every K-8 student in the Portland metropolitan region’s school districts.” And the goal has a good kick-start. Beginning this winter, 20 schools will give the idea a test drive — two in the Gresham-Barlow district, six in North Clackamas, four in Hillsboro and eight in the Portland district. Programs will be put in place by Young Audiences of Oregon and Southwest Washington, which has many years’ experience bringing arts events into public schools.

Some good old-fashioned left-brain questions remain to be asked, and a lot of tough left-brain work needs to be done to bring this thing on-line. The point, after all, isn’t to kick analytical thinking out of the schools and substitute it with daydreams, but to teach kids how to fuse their thinking and use their whole brains: analysis and imagination working together. How do we learn? What is the purpose of learning? How do we engage our students in the excitement of discovery? How do we teach them to survive and thrive in a 21st century that demands adaptability and suppleness of thought?

Continue reading Scatter, the new generation: On the right-brain revolution →

Barry Johnson, General

More about money and art: Lehman Brothers, Seattle Art Museum, Oregon Symphony and Brad Cloepfil

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So we will continue our meditation on the connection between art and money. Which really, we hate to do — the connection makes things messy in so many ways, and when we are thinking about the connection we aren’t thinking about the art. But we are thinking about the conditions that make art possible, for better or worse, so we will persevere, at least through a series of related links.

First, of all, Bloomberg’s Lindsay Pollack notes that bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers has something on the order of 3,500 contemporary art works in its collection and wonders what will happen to it now. There must not be an accessible list of the art, because Pollack’s own list is rather sketchy — though it includes work by Louise Nevelson and Jasper Johns, not to mention Damian Hirst. But the article does give us a sense of the long history of the Lehman name in art circles — there is a Robert Lehman wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, after all, named after the grandson of the founder of the bank.

Closer to home, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Regina Hackett notes the VERY close connection between the Seattle Art Museum and Washington Mutual, the huge savings and loan which is both under great financial pressure and looking for a buyer as we type this. The two share a building in downtown Seattle in a complex arrangement that the museum used to finance the extension, designed by Portland’s own Brad Cloepfil. The museum says it has its bases covered, no matter what happens to WaMu, but Hackett has found some folks who aren’t so sure.

Closer still, Art Scatter friend David Stabler, at The Oregonian, found out that the Oregon Symphony hasn’t detected any deterioration in the financial commitments of its patrons. This could be a “Planet Arts” phenomena (see post below), but it is encouraging, nonetheless. And he found the silver lining in all of this:

How many times have we heard that the arts should be run more like businesses? Well, Brian Dickie, General Director of Chicago Opera Theatre in Chicago (the small company, not Lyric Opera), hopes he never hears that again, “given what CEOs with MBAs from the major business schools have managed to do to some of the country’s largest financial institutions.”

All we can say is, sweet!

And finally, speaking of Brad Cloepfil, he’s at the heart of the beast in New York City, where his redesign of 2 Columbus Circle is unveiling. Another Scatter friend, Inara Verzemnieks, is there and she’s been posting about it on OregonLive and had a front page story about it in today’s Oregonian. For us the key quote came at the end (consider this a spoiler alert):

One of the criticisms that has been leveled at Cloepfil’s building is that it is not bold enough, not enough of a break with the past. But this blurring of past and present seemed to be what Cloepfil wanted. He seemed to like playing with the tension between what you thought you remembered — is that the lollipop building? — and what you now see. That it was possible for the two to occupy the same space.

“The ambiguity of memory,” he said. “Isn’t that sometimes the nature of cities?”

We’d much rather end with the ambiguity of memory than the ambiguity of money.

Barry Johnson

Will the arts follow Lehman Bros. into the tank?

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When the economy gets bad, Recession bad, the common understanding is that the arts suffer even worse. And the Wall Street, sub-prime loan crash looks like it may kick the rest of the economy into R-word land, once and for all. So, arts groups are headed for the hills, where they will attempt to hunker down and hold out to the last mime, right? Well, no, not according to David Segal and Jacqueline Trescott in the Washington Post, who surveyed arts groups in New York, mostly, but also Washington to see what the mood was.

Segal and Trescott, perhaps expecting to find panic, ran into a pocket of relative calm. Maybe it’s that corporate giving to the arts is so low in the U.S. — the article says 3 percent of all contributed income — or maybe it’s just blind optimism, but the executive directors refused to buckle. The key quote came at the end:

It’s an article of faith among theater honchos that when the going gets depressing, the depressed go to the theater.

My own theory is that Planet Arts, as the article colorfully calls it, is used to operating near the edge all the time and has confidence in its coping skills. The garden out back. The chickens. The Dumpster diving. Or maybe, as the article suggests, it simply takes a while for economic problems to reach the far-flung planet. Portland isn’t Wall Street, and we have missed much of the direct sub-prime misery that has afflicted California and Florida. But we are not in a bubble here, and the indirect effects are now hitting us (checked your stock portfolio lately? Art Scatter refuses to investigate the one share of Bear Stearns our granny left us).

So, what happens here on our little piece of Planet Arts? I’m not sure. I’ve heard rumblings of majors in trouble for some time now. How resilient will they be if we are facing a one- or two-year Recession? And if the majors ramp up their requests for money from individuals and foundations, will the mid-sized and smaller groups start to feel the pain, too? That’s an honest question… I know lots of Scatter readers work for or are near to arts groups in town. What do you think? What have you heard? Where are we headed? Use the comments section OR if you need more anonymity than that, email us at artscatterpdx@gmail.com.