All posts by Barry Johnson

Barry Johnson has edited and written about the arts in Portland since 1979.
Barry Johnson, General, Visual Art

Artists in China: Good foreign policy

1 Comment

A Jeff Koons planted in the yard of the new American embassy in China. And not just a Koons “Tulips” sculpture, either. Work by Maya Lin and Louise Bourgeois will also be there. Robert Rauschenberg and Martin Puryear, too. According to the Art Newspaper, the U.S. government is spending $800,000 on (mostly) commissioned artworks for the embassy, a mix of Chinese and American artists. And for once, I’m totally aligned with American foreign policy. China needs the subversion of Puryear, the gentle suggestions of Lin and maybe even the imaginative flights of Koons, which should fit in well in the go-go Chinese economy. A very small number of people will see them, of course, but it’s the idea of the thing: Art suggests an alternative reality, an alternative foreign policy, a new way of thinking about things. And if I were a Kantian, I might suggest a new Spirit.

Here’s Arthur C. Danto in The Nation, describing the work of Puryear at a MoMA exhibition late last year:

Once in a while, an artist appears whose work has high meaning and great craft but, most important, embodies what Kant, in the dense, sparse pages in which he advances his theory of art, called Spirit. “We say of certain products of which we expect that they should at least in part appear as beautiful art, they are without spirit, though we find nothing to blame in them on the score of taste,” Kant wrote. I’d like to revive the term for critical discourse. Not a single piece here is without spirit, which is in part what makes this exhibition almost uniquely exhilarating.

As the American experiment in democracy has foundered in recent decades (we could argue about this, but let’s just let the assertion stand for now, yes?), American artists have become more acute about it — pointing out failures, suggesting repairs, expressing anger and embarrassment. The most concentrated dose of oppositional politics I get in Portland, is in the art galleries (and maybe you could add the clubs, theaters and independent cinemas). At its best, it achieves the nuance of Puryear, which is what attracts philosopher Danto the most, perhaps, but it is awash in spirit. And I find I need it.

China? Yes, China needs it, too. The Chinese paintings described in the linked article show that artists there are just as sensitive to the human and environmental costs of China’s Market Authoritarianism as our artists are to their situation. And the idea of dropping Francis Bacon paintings into Qatar and raising Guggenheims and Louvres in Abu Dhabi, as we’ve remarked earlier? It will be fun to see the Picassos do their stuff — I suspect that the locals won’t be allowed to see them after a while. Too hot to handle.

Barry Johnson, General

Aesthetic politics: Obama, Dewey, Potter, IFCC

1 Comment

Last night, watching the primary results roll in (and a strange Gregory Peck movie on Turner Movie Classics), I was struck yet again by the John Dewey in Barack Obama’s victory speech. I know, I know: I’ve managed to locate Dewey in just about everything. I didn’t post about it, but I even detected him in Dark Horse Comics chief Mike Richardson in his speech at the Stumptown Comic Fest. Richardson was terrific, by the way. So maybe I’m monomaniacal on this subject, as obsessive readers of Art Scatter already know.

Dewey and Obama. It has to do with process. Embedded within this speech and all of the others that I’ve heard Obama give (not a VERY large number), he tells you how he thinks he is going to bring about the change he talks about (to health care, foreign policy, education, etc.). He believes that Americans want their problems solved and are “looking for honest answers about the problems we face.” He believes they have the capacity to understand when they hear something that makes sense. He thinks they are ready to sit down and listen. And he is committed to “telling the truth — forcefully, repeatedly, confidently — and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change.” Not just the American people, either, because his foreign policy is built on the same process: talk. And he describes what he thinks freezes our process now — “I trust the American people’s desire to no longer be defined by our differences” — and why he thinks we can change, the hopes we have in common. And all of this is straight out of the American Pragmatism playbook.
Continue reading Aesthetic politics: Obama, Dewey, Potter, IFCC →

General

Art New$: Rothko, Ferriso, financial advice to children

3 Comments

From time to time, events remind Art Scatter, even resolutely non-commercial as it, that in many precincts of the dominion money is commonly thought to make the world go ’round. It certainly sets the art world to spinning when some falls its way. Two recent examples:

Mystery buyer of record-setting Rothko revealed! Way back last year, when the dollar was still worth something, a painting by Mark Rothko, White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950, sold for $72.8 million at Sotheby’s New York. Thanks to the Art Newspaper, we now know that Emir of Qatar and his wife bought it, along with Francis Bacon’s Study from Innocent X, which fetched a mere $52.7 million. We don’t usually report art auction doings, but in this case, we must point out that Rothko went to Benson High School Lincoln High School in Portland: Study art, kids!

Portland Art museum Director makes big money! D.K. Row’s thoughtful profile of Brian Ferriso contained one little nugget that might have raised some eyebrows — Ferriso makes $295,000 a year, which is still far less than his predecessor John Buchanan was paid. That’s still a lot of pizza, which Ferriso dined on at yummy Hot Lips Pizza when he first moved to town. But it’s on the low end of what museum directors are getting these days — $300,00 to $650,000 at small and mid-sized museums in the Midwest and South, according to artsmanagement.net, which explains the phenomenon. Hey kids, forget the art: take arts management classes instead!

Barry Johnson, Books

Scatter considers the Nabokov Dilemma

2 Comments

Let’s just say your mother is a potter, an accomplished potter, a demanding potter. At the end of her life she started work on a new approach and made some progress. But then she took ill and joined the ceramic guild in the sky. Her last request? Destroy that last pot. What would you do? Honor her request by breaking it into a thousand pieces or honor her life’s work by keeping it?

That’s the dilemma faced by Dmitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir. To destroy his father’s last manuscript, actually the 138 index cards on which was assembling his last novel in typical Nabokovian fashion, or keep it and perhaps publish it. Perhaps you already know about this, yes? It’s made the mainstream media and the literary blogs, and the New York Times had an interview with Dmitri on Sunday.

So, should Dmitri burn The Original of Laura as Vladimir asked, light index card number one (with what, a kitchen match? a lighter made especially for the occasion? toss it into a good wood fire?) and watch the stack of them turn to ash? That’s what he said he wanted. Oops. Did you catch that “he said”? That’s a crack in the door through which Dmitri inserted his foot. Because what did Vladimir really want? Because sometimes he said things that he didn’t mean. We all do. And what we say can run counter to our deepest desire. And the request seems like such a gesture, a Romantic gesture. Dmitri knew his father (he even visited him recently to help him resolve the dilemma!). And he has decided to publish Laura. Scholars and the literary public rejoice!

Personally, I imagine that Vladimir meant what he said: Burn the damn thing. It’s caused me nothing but trouble. I keep getting sick. It’s not done. It’s not good. Yet. (I give him the “yet”.) It will be a weight off my shoulders, and I need to be unencumbered as I pass across the River Styx. Actually, I ‘m sure he wouldn’t say “weight off my shoulders” and I don’t know what his views on the afterworld are. But you get the idea. It’s a reasonable point of view. Dmitri defied his father.
Continue reading Scatter considers the Nabokov Dilemma →

Barry Johnson, General

It’s the end-of-the-week scatter

1 Comment

By the numbers now:

1. Sister city Oregon has its tweakers, we know this because they steal our sculpture and sell it for scrap. (Well, we know it for all kinds of worse reasons, too.) Is it any consolation that we aren’t alone? The city of Brea, California, which has an active public art program, has had three bronze sculptures stolen in the past 18 months. The Wall Street Journal explains the problem as only the WSJ can (at least until Rupert Murdoch makes mincemeat of it): The main component of bronze is copper; three years ago, the price of copper was $1.50 a pound; today, it goes for $4. Walk off with a 250 pound sculpture as thieves did in Brea, and that’s a pretty nice haul.

A good source for local art theft news? Portland Public Art, a blog that’s a little more various than its title suggests (it takes time out for other sorts of cultural history and is devoted to local indie music), has tracked the theft of Sacagawea in Astoria, for example, and the theft of sculptures by Tom Hardy and Frederic Littman from the Vollum estate. The site also has a rockin’ blogroll, though it’s a little out of date: Art Scatter isn’t on there!

2. Walk in the garden I am still mesmerized by the notion that Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler spent four hours chatting together in the Dutch town of Leyden for the express purpose of improving Gustav’s marital, um, relations with Alma. And that Freud decided that Gustav had a mother fixation. Gustav later said that he didn’t agree with Sigmund, but there had been therapeutic benefits in any case. The story pops up in the entry below. They may have even walked through the botanical gardens, at left!

3. Save the past The Guardian newspaper has championed the preservation of artifacts in Iraq. In the latest development Iraqi officials are calling for a world-wide ban on the sale and purchase of Iraqi antiquities, hoping to remove their commercial value to looters, who have stripped 15 percent of the archaeological sites in the country, according to experts. We’ve talked about this before: Whatever your position on antiquities (should they always be returned their country of origin or not), this sounds like a good idea.

In other artifact news: German police uncovered 1,100 pre-Colombian antiquities — Mayan, Incan and Aztec — in a Munich warehouse. Several South American countries are claiming ownership, though a Costa Rican doctor insists that he obtained them all legally. Masks, gems and sculptures were part of the treasure trove. Der Spiegel has the report.

Note on sources: We visit the ArtJournal site every day, as we’ve said before. These stories were aggregated on the AJ site (which contains an impressive list of blogger/columnists as well).

Barry Johnson, General, Music

I’ve got the Mahler in me

3 Comments

When tickets to Sunday night’s Oregon Symphony performance of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony fell my way, the Classical Music Critic’s left eyebrow arched, he peered over his spectacles and with absolutely no edge in his voice to betray him, said, “It’s long.” Long, my brother? Long? I know long. Long is when the stream of time starts to puddle up … and then flow backward, away from me. (Like the Mississippi River after the New Madrid earthquake of 1812.) You look down at your watch and it’s 8:43. Hours pass. Look again and it’s 8:37. Have you been going the speed of light? No, you’ve been in an excruciating play or concert or movie that you can’t escape, a time eddy. Having canoed through these treacherous timestreams before, and survived, “long” does NOT deter me. And the Classical Music Critic, let’s call him Stevie, realized my firm resolve, brought out a reference book that sought to de-mystify the Mahler Nine, from here on known simply as Nine, and improperly prepared, I folded my body into the torture device known as a seat in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Nine trembles into life as a low, intermittent murmur, conductor Carlos Kalmar motioning to the deepest horns and strings to begin. And immediately Mozart’s Quintet in C Major comes to mind, the contrast of it, that deep cello rising confidently, a growly friction that emerges as a melody of sorts, one of my favorite openings. This is apropos nothing really, though Mahler’s wife Alma recounted that the composer died with Mozart’s name on his lips. (See how we grasp at the slightest biographical evidence to “understand” both what we hear and how we think about what we hear? This thought will escape from parentheses before you know it.) So, low and intermittent, emphasized by plucked notes. Some Mahler analysts claim to detect an irregular rhythm in this, and perhaps it really is there: They say it’s a musical reflection of Mahler’s heart problems, an arrhythmia captured in the beginning of his Death Symphony. (See previous parenthetical!) And then tremulousness subsiding, the heart steady, horns call us to a lush, stringy, sweet orchestral melody, pastoral even.

If we were in a story ballet, the happy shepherd would be gesturing to his happy bride-to-be from a nearby hillock. But this being Mahler, truly, we know this happy harmony will not last, and as I examine my notes afterwards, sure enough:”then darkening and bang we speed along darker, pulsing, too loud for sweet, too brassy, a crescendo and then back to the lush beginning.” In the long first movement, there are serious complications, returns to the melody, more complications. The trombones make a weird, throaty sound, competing musical lines clash and resolve in drumming, the simplest, quietest moment is abruptly overtaken. Sometimes it sound “exotic” like a Conan, to my ears both kitschy and cinematic (more on cinematic later). And then it ends, quietly, fewer and fewer resources of the orchestra invoked, heading for one high, barely audible note.
Continue reading I’ve got the Mahler in me →

Music

Your scatter tip of the week

1 Comment

Da Bearcat sez: That Mahler Nine the Oregon Symphony is doing? It’s aces, my fine scatter friends, aces. If you are in the money, give them a call, tell them Art Scatter sent you (that will definitely confuse them), secure tickets (the upper balcony is great for sound and cheaper), prepare for 80 minutes/no intermission (you know what I’m talking about) and settle in for a finely detailed account of Mahler’s last completed symphony. The symphony couldn’t play this way before Kalmar arrived, with this sort of energy and attention, enough to keep something like this interesting second by second. And Mahler in a transition state — on the brink of modern art, on the brink of death (at least he thought he was), on the brink of leaving Europe for New York — is pretty involving stuff. More scatter thoughts on this at a later date…

Barry Johnson, Books, General, Music, Visual Art

Friday hyper-scatter

Leave a comment

So, what’s Art Scatter doing this weekend, you might ask… One-third is headed for Willow Lake, South Dakota, to visit its aunts and relive childhood memories. One-third is headed for the Hood Canal and oysters, glorious oysters. But what about the third that stays at home, what about that third, the third that blew his travel budget on an all-day TriMet pass last week?

1. The Ceramic Showcase 2008: We are admitted suckers for crafts — making something from the essentially nothing (clay, tall grasses, etc.) just gets us excited. It’s like alchemy! Plus they align us with John Ruskin and William Morris and the craft traditions of Asia… sweet. And actually we need a serving bowl (crash — “sorry!”) and four plates. Fire in the kiln… at the Convention Center.

2. The Stumptown Comics Fest: When we were a little kid, see, there were these three giant boxes of comic books collected by our uncle (are you starting to see the limitations of the 1st person plural? we are…), and every time I visited my grandparents, well, you get the idea. This is the most important comics event in Portland this year (and Portland is a serious comics town). Just about all of our local stars will be there, and we have lots! You don’t have to be totally geeked out to go, either. I have a feeling the “spotlight” sessions with the likes of Mike Richardson (Dark Horse Comics), Craig Thompson (long-form graphic autobiography), Brian Michael Bendis (comic book supernova), etc., will be jammed, so pick a couple and get there early. To get you in the spirit, here’s Mike Russell’s comics introduction(published in today’s Oregonian) — it’s a beauty. The convention is at the Lloyd Center DoubleTree hotel.

3. Mahler’s Ninth Symphony: The Oregon Symphony takes on the last finished Mahler symphony. It’s long (90 minutes without intermission), but I will prepare: I’ll eat right, plenty of exercise and do some puzzles for my mental agility before arriving. Maybe I’ll also drift over to Music Millennium and buy a recording of it before heading in. I like the idea of a massive Mahler overlay of the comics convention! Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

4. Portland Timbers v. Seattle Sounders: And if the weather behaves itself at all, those mighty Portland Timbers will play a bit of footie (that’s soccer) against their hated Northwest rivals. We love Chris Brown! PGE Park

General, Visual Art

Scatter news and scatter notes

Leave a comment

\"Gross Clinic,\" Thomas EakinsNews: The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Academy of Art have raised the $68 million necessary to buy Thomas Eakins’ “Gross Clinic” and keep it in Philadelphia. Without a city-wide effort to purchase it, “Gross Clinic” would have headed to Bentonville, Ark., and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by a Wal-Mart heiress.

Notes: So, the question arises, what paintings residing in Oregon would (or should) generate a similar effort to keep them in the state? My quick, short, wrong list: 1.) The C.S. Prices at the Central Library. 2.) The Hilda Morris bronze sculpture in front of the Standard Insurance Building on S.W. 6th Ave. (and maybe her sculptures on the lawn at Reed College). 3.) The Isaka Shamsud-Din painting of the pool hall. Isn’t it at the Portland Art Museum? 4.) Cindy Parker’s big painting at the Convention Center. 5.) The multi-paneled James Lavadour that usual resides at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute in Pendleton. But that’s a very fast, rough cut (obviously!). Help me out!

News: Francis Bacon’s 1976 Triptych goes on sale at Sotheby’s in New York on May 14 and is expected to fetch somewhere around $70 million. It’s the last major Bacon painting still in private hands.

Notes: Yesterday, we connected the British painter Francis Bacon to Portland artist George Johanson — Bacon, David Hockney and the Brits he met at the Birgit Skiold printmaking studios in London helped to confirm his decision to leave Abstract Expressionism behind and re-embrace the figure. Art Scatter has a certain fondness for Bacon, both his gruesome paintings and his tumultuous personal life, from his days in the Weimar demi-monde to Paris to London. We like the sense of dread that hovers over his paintings, his reduction of humans to slabs of beef, those famous gaping mouths that suggest torture. He prefigures, maybe even predicts, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and the Dark Ops rooms in Eastern Europe, although he was probably citing Nazi torture chambers. It’s possible that this reading is too political, though; maybe he thought he was representing the human condition period, not the human condition in extremis.

Although I don’t have the receipts in front of me, I’m pretty confident that no George Johanson painting has ever commanded $70 million. Heck, the prints at Pulliam Deffenbaugh are $850 apiece, not to equate them with Triptych, which is a major Bacon painting. But the sensuality of Johanson’s paintings, without a glimmer of S/M in sight, has a dark, mysterious element, that speaks to us, too. Things are about to happen in them, voluptuous things, sexual things, passionate things, rarely creepy things. I like their possibility.

News:The San Francisco Ballet is in the middle of a festival of new work — 10 new dances by the likes of Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, James Kudelka and Christopher Wheeldon.

Notes: Lots of those names will be familiar to White Bird and Oregon Ballet Theatre fans. And the San Francisco Ballet itself will be in town for White Bird’s “4 X 4 — The Ballet Project.”

Barry Johnson, Books, General, Visual Art

George Johanson, printed and embossed!

7 Comments

johanson-3.jpg

The busy, intersecting circles and lines of Milton Wilson paintings catch the eye first at Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery — they are on the wall opposite the door after all and their hum is hard to ignore. But this isn’t about Milton Wilson. Take a few steps more and pivot to the right and the maneuver leads to a set of seven sweet prints by George Johanson.

Maybe they won’t read as Johansons to many of us who own Johanson prints — those great Portland night scenes, with the river below us full of rowers, the volcano erupting in the distance, a cat streaking across the frame, full of interesting textures and visual delights. The prints at Pulliam-Deffenbach date back to 1970 — no night scenes, no cats and, of course, no volcanoes. There are seven of them — part of the 10-part Juxtapositions series, that Johanson created on an Arts Advocates grant in London at the Birgit Skiold studios — consigned to the gallery by their owner. And, not to make too big a deal out of them, they make a great case all by themselves for what has made Johanson so much fun to follow during his career, namely, his skill with line, his happy refusal to allow any “school” to limit him, and his imagination, which we already know about from his later prints and paintings. (No one I can think of has re-imagined Portland to the extent Johanson has, a theatrical Portland, filled it with sensual mysteries and a taste of the surreal, where the carnival never stops, all staged on a deck somewhere in the hills above the city.)
Continue reading George Johanson, printed and embossed! →