Insight Guides Barcelona

“… (see page 170); t features in Woody Allen’s latest novie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (due )ut at the end of 2008). …”

Every blue moon, I’ll see a film that I think everyone should see. In this case, the film is Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” It’s a MUST see … especially if you’re the creative type. More on that in a few seconds.

First off, NO ONE weaves a tale like Woody Allen. I cannot think of another director whose storytelling is so beautifully intricate and seamless, yet at the same time, you can almost see the wheels turning inside his head. I’m going to tell you about this film without actually telling you about it. Woody Allen is not in the film, nor is he the narrator, nor is it based in New York City, yet this is the quintessential Woody Allen film. Woody Allen in Barcelona.

Second, he uses narration to move the pace along pretty quickly and keep us attentive. It totally works. The film is a delightful basket full of wine, Spanish guitar,
laziness, craziness, profound purpose and sexual intrigue. The cast is like a musical ensemble featuring Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, the fantastic Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall and Patricia Clarkson, among others.

Third, this is a film strictly for ADULTS. Thank God. How often do we see “thinking” films for adults? Nothing gets blown up and there aren’t any magical, animated characters that do Disney-esque things (nothing against them). What we have here are people who are dreaming of and seeking better lives. Doesn’t that describe us all?

Four, what really impressed me about this film was … drum roll please … ART. The way Allen uses art in this film is masterful. It’s not just about the painting, photography, music or writing, but also the way he captures the feelings and thoughts of the artists/characters. Every major character in the film takes a chance and gets creative with varying results. Every character struggles to be free. I guess you can’t put a price on creative freedom.

This film reminds us that when you bank on artistic vision, you’re on the track to happiness. That’s unless something not so great happens. Penelope Cruz’s character brings this home. As usual, Allen ties up the loose ends with great skill. It totally satisfies that childlike, “Tell me a story!” urge in you. One more quick thing … the film is roughly about an hour and a half long. Fantastic. I’m going back out now to run some errands.

In short, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is the perfect film for a lazy August day … or any day. It’s a matinee for creative, thinking adults, but I’m no film critic. Don’t take my word for it. See it for yourself.

Art In King Size Beds: A Collector’s Journal by Michael, K. Corbin

Do you like art, but find it intimidating? Does the thought of visiting an art museum or gallery make you uneasy? Would you like to own original art? Well, here’s the book for you! “Art In King Size Beds: A Collector’s Journal,” is a glorious walk through the world of contemporary art. Finally, an artbook for real people! It’s a surprisingly new and refreshing look at art. Come along with art collector Michael Corbin on his journey and enjoy great stories and fantastic color photos of some of the hottest work from living artists today. Spectacular art is emerging all around you. It’s a powerful force that inspires and enriches your life. With his warm, witty and engaging style, Corbin will leave you wishing that you had become an art lover much sooner. An enlightening and fun ride.

Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations with Michael Calvin McGee by Carol Corbin

Michael Calvin McGee died last month after one of those maddeningly cruel lengthy illnesses that prematurely forced him out of the classroom he so dearly loved. “Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations with Michael Calvin McGee” is a cherished reminder of McGee as a mentor to those of us who studied under him at the University of Iowa and elsewhere, and an introduction to his approach to the study of rhetoric for the rest of the world. The conversations themselves are based on a series of seminars in which McGee developed with complex web of ideas. Those who studied with McGee will quickly find themselves in familiar territory as they read these five conversations (for me it was the Todd Willey anecdote about why English Departments consider rhetoricians bastard stepchildren unworthy of entry into the ivory towers of academia):

The volume begins with what amounts to an introductory first chapter entitled “McGee Unplugged,” written by John Louis Lucaites, who was the first American born student to complete his doctorate under McGee. Lucaites reminds us that stylistically, conversations were McGee’s forum of choice and that the conversations included in this volume do not have to be read sequentially. You can just as easily get from Isocrates as an example of “phronimos” in Chapter 2 to the notion of collectivity in Chapter 5 as you can the importance of representation to rhetoric. From the materialist conception of rhetoric to the need to remodel liberalism, the topics McGee talks about dance in and around the pivotal relationship between rhetoric and social theory, which was on one level simply the conventional name given at Iowa to McGee’s work.

Chapter 2, Formal Discursive Theories reconsiders the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic and then the notion of wisdom, for which Isocrates and not Plato is the Dead Greek of choice. This leads to representations as the key way of characterizing our study of human action.

Chapter 3, The Postmodern Condition follows the lead of Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan in considering orality to be humanity’s state of nature. Ironically technology has allowed us to return to a more oral view of the world and creates new problems for looking at a “text,” which can no longer be considered a single, finite entity.

Chapter 4, American Liberalism is more about the Whig-Liberal tradition that harkens back to Edmund Burke than it does to contemporary left-wing politics. With the shift from the Aristotlean rhetoric of persuasion to the Burkean rhetoric of identification, McGee posits the goal of scholarly endeavor to be political effectiveness in general and remodeling liberalism in particular. Within this context McGee looks at property and capital (i.e., how to tell the difference between liberals and communists), and how morality creates the space between law and liberty that establishes a code of conduct. Multicultrualism raises the issue of heterogeneity in our society while McGee returns to a favorite topic when he talks about the dynamic between “male” sovereignty and “female” solidarity.”

Chapter 5, The People reconsiders the key elements of McGee’s first seminal QJS essay by contrasting the spectatorship created by a world dominated by television with the collectivity that television can create in crisis. This returns us to the intellectual problem of subjectivity and ontology, which is what gets McGee to his friends Jose Ortega y Gasset and Jurgen Habermas.

Chapter 6, Materialism is established as a coherent philosophical position that is a variant of realism, which historical materialism (a pivotal term) as coded human practice. The idea of objectivity merely reminds us that human discourse is both referential and subjective at the same time. McGee uses the term instantiation to help us tell how materialism is different from the word as used by Communists and Wall Street types. A materialist’s morality takes a more political turn that the Christian morality that serves as an idealistic exemplar.

As an example of McGee’s “performance criticism,” the volume concludes with a previously unpublished work “Fragments of Winter: Racial Discontent in America, 1992,” in which McGee finds an extension of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Spike Lee’s film, “Do the Right Thing.” Without getting into the particulars of this compelling essay, I would point out that McGee considers Lee’s film on a cultural par with Picasso’s painting “Guernica.”

After reading this book the comparison between McGee and Kenneth Burke is perhaps the most relevant (flashback: McGee escorting the elderly Burke, who was about half McGee’s size, at an SCA convention), for the simple reason that their public arguments display the same astounding breadth and depth of sources. For McGee reading Burke alone provided a superficial understanding; the only appropriate alternative was to read everything Burke had read (a premise fated to stay the heart of many a graduate student). For this reason you will find McGee talking about everything from Louis Althusser’s understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and power to Thomas Szasz’s study of the myth of mental illness (and that is just the names “dropped” over the course of these five conversations and one essay).

It must be noted that both of the reviewer comments by colleagues of McGee on the back of this volume use the word “exasperating” to describe these conversation, the term being contrasted with “stimulating” and “intriguing” respectively. The explanation for such exasperation, dear friends, lies within the cognitive realm of the receiver. I would advance this brief example of exorcism by appropriating a political slogan McGee would have found unsettling in his younger days: in your heart, you know he’s right.

Lawrance M. Bernabo, “The Scopes Myth: The Scopes Trial in Rhetorical Perspective,” Disseration, University of Iowa, 1990, directed by Michael Calvin McGee.

The Art Of Everyday Joe: A Collector’s Journal by Michael K. Corbin

“… Michael Corbin Blank Space 8.5 X 11 Nothing on Paper …”

When I saw this book, my thoughts echoed a phrase on the back cover exactly, “Finally, It’s Here!” A book that would explain the ins and outs of art collecting. What type of art should I collect? Who are the up-and-coming new artists? Where do I find the best art? What should I be looking for to make my art collection shine?

In “The Art of Everyday Joe: A Collector’s Journal” I found the answers I needed, without finding the answers to any of these questions. There is no right and wrong when looking at art, you go with what moves you. I should have known that. It was nice to have this book remind me in a subtle, easy manner.

As an artist myself, I was also drawn to this book to find out how others view art. What is an art collector looking for? What does an art collector look like? Where do I find them? Again, I was expecting hard and fast answers. I got a reminder in simplicity. The art collectors are looking for the artists to create from their hearts so that they can buy from their hearts. Art collectors are anyone and everyone. The “Everyday Joe!”

Michael Corbin’s “The Art of Everyday Joe” is the second in a series of “Collector’s Journals.” A writer by profession and lover of art, Michael uses essays on all topics to make the reader realize that art is all around us. In his essays he talks about a varied range of topics such as rudeness, airports, and bubblewrap. Some essays are about specific artists or art forms. Others barely mention art at all. But all have the same purpose — to show us that collecting art is not stuffy and only for the rich. Cover your walls from floor to ceiling with art from living, working artists. Tear that Picasso image out of that magazine and frame it. Revel in the beauty of the oatmeal box!

In “The Art of Everyday Joe: A Collector’s Journal,” author Michael K. Corbin uses images from his art collection to enhance the book and complement the essays. He did a great job of matching art with essays and showed a variety of art styles. It was a pleasure flipping through and looking at the art, and I am sure quite a thrill for the author to show off his art collection to so many people. Corbin’s

The book was delivered very quickly and in excellent condition. The book itself is excellent, I only wish in the description it had been mentioned that it was a French version, I did not see the fine print that it was in French. I purchased the book for my art school unfortunately I am the only French speaking person there. I would not have purchased it had I known.

Jean-Leon Gerome’s “Pollice Verso” of 1872
Young Greeks at a cock fight by Jean-Leon Gerome (combat de coqs)
Jean-Leon Gerome The Snake Charmer 1889. Oil on canvas. 33.07 x 48.03 inches
Gerome, The Slave Market, 1867, oil painting, Size 33 3/16 x 24 13/16 inches.
Jean-Leon Gerome, The Moorish bath, 1870. Oil on canvas.
Jean-Leon Gerome, 1869, oil on canvas. Pelt Merchant of Cairo
(1890) Jean-Leon Gerome -Pygmalion & Galatea
Jean-Leon Gerome The End of the Sitting
Jean-Leon Gerome Phryne before the Areopagus 1861
Jean-Leon Gerome Nude Woman Femme nue
Jean-Leon Gerome Lighting the Pipe, The Teaser of the Narghile, 1898
Jean-Leon Gerome A Moorish Bath Turkish Woman Bathing
Jean-Leon Gerome Pool in a Harem of 1876
Jean-Leon Gerome Greek Interior 1848
Jean-Leon Gerome Woman Bathing Her Feet Oil on canvas, 1889
Jean-Leon Gerome Bathsheba, 1889
Jean-Leon Gerome Working in Marble, The Artist’s Model
Jean-Leon Gerome Almehs Playing Chess, 1870
Jean-Leon Gerome An Arab Caravan outside a Fortified Town
Jean-Leon Gerome Anacreon 3
Jean-Leon Gerome King Candaules, 1859
Jean-Leon Gerome Nude Woman
Jean-Leon Gerome Slave Auction

The image you see here is something Rui, Fernando and I worked on together and shipped off to Australia for an exhibition at the Yarra Sculpture Centre in Melbourne. I mention this because it is one of the things I find challenging about these new internet times: the new forms and possibilities of interaction between artists.

The way I see it, more and more, these are hard times for individual shows but favourable for artists to come together and organize interesting things, sharing the costs, burdens and laurels. Times for being artists for the love of art, in the hope that we attract some attention to what we are doing; and that eventually one or two things will sell and we can move on to the next project.

The present momentum started back in March when fellow aa artist Roxanne Brousseau-F responded to one of my blogs and invited me to take part in a project she was working on and join a network of artists she has set up called SpreadArt.net [ http://www.SpreadArt.net ]. Up until then I used to be overly cautious regarding things arranged over the internet but after visiting her site on aa - especially her videos - and a brief exchange of e-mails, my fears were washed aside. Roxanne planned to collect video footage from 38 artists in 16 countries and edit them into a video for Earth Day, and organize a live video-conference with the artists involved in cooperation with project _8_0_8_.

All artists were given guidelines for the intended project and on Earth Day I set out looking for my pothole in the middle of a busy road in which to plant my flower, complete with soil, and film the whole proceedings and reactions thereto. I missed the video-conference a few days later due to my own clumsiness and miscalculation of the time zones, waking up at 4am anticipating a connection that had happened earlier that day. But it turned out a success and Roxanne’s expedient efforts got the project aired on CNN [ http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/ireports/2008/06/02/ireport.for.cnn.blk.c.cnn ].

The connection for the Ship of Hope / Ship of Fools - One World project arrived in my in-box a few days later, again thanks to Roxanne’s generosity and ability to bring artists together. Upon her suggestion those of us who felt up to the challenge were to contact the curator of the project, Julie Collins-John, who would then send us a model of the ship plus additional instructions. We had to move fast, the ship had to be sent from Australia, assembled and worked on and sent back in time for the opening this coming Wednesday 18 June.

Working on a similar project with my studio companions I didn’t feel too good about going solo on this one and so I wrote Roxanne and Julie Collins-John if it would be OK to bring them in. The ship was on its way and we were like three little children waiting for a new toy to arrive. There was a brief brainstorming session and we agreed to start off from my original plan to do both a Ship of Hope and a Ship of Fools, all in one - one half would be riddled with holes, the other would have knots tied in. But by the time we received the envelope with the pieces for the 30cm long boat we had moved beyond that.

The ship could be tied on to a sea of transparent acrylic riddled with holes, but as we worked on that we felt that it wouldn’t gain sufficient power as an object and so we decided to tie knots into the holes - some of these would be long and undulating, others would be cut short - the knots that tied the boat and all the knots spurting out of the boat would be even longer and would be painted bright green. Very simplistic, really: as the ship sails ahead on a sea full of obstacles hope springs forth from it, and that’s when the final idea came to us of painting the knots on the acrylic plate black. A Ship of Hope on a Sea of Fools. Naturally I got most of the action on video for future use: One of the things we want to have in our own show in December is a video projection on one of the four walls in the gallery, clips from this collaboration will find their way into that and hopefully we can find other ways to link these two projects.

This time I hope not to get the time zones all mixed up and join in the video-conference fun with Rui and Fernando. If I got it right this time 8pm Australian Eastern Standard time should be 12 noon, when we’re all together at the studio.

On Sunday night, HBO aired its new film ‘Recount,’ which delved back into the controversial Florida recount that determined the outcome of America’s 2000 presidential election. Days before the film (watch the trailer here) hit the airwaves, Charlie Rose conducted an interview with Kevin Spacey (actor in the film), Jeffrey Toobin (Senior Legal Analyst at CNN) and David Boies (who argued Bush v. Gore on behalf of Al Gore). In watching the film and interview, my first reaction was to think: yes, it’s been eight long years, but it’s perhaps not been long enough. Perhaps another eight years is what it takes before political trauma can be transformed into pure entertainment. Or maybe it will never quite get there. But that says nothing about the merits of the film or the interview below. If you missed ‘Recount,’ it re-airs tonight on HBO.

NBCC member Leora Skolkin-Smith reports on the conversations between New Republic Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier and Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua during the PEN World Voices Festival:

What happens when one’s deeper cultural identity has been irrevocably scattered, reshaped,and claimed? When a diaspora of the self has occurred in a way,but the pieces exiled have been the victim’s own? To be an Israeli who grew up in a time before the state of Israel, before 1948, in a Palestine divided into border-free neighborhoods of Jews, Muslims and Christians can feel like one has lived only in a
fairytale.In this netherland of memory and being, lost cities and forgotten alliances, few writers have the tools with which to create a lasting fiction. The real experience is unreal enough, perhaps, a story few believe anyway, not grounded in contemporary Israel and Palestine and therefore unimaginable to the majority of
people who know this region only through the images of the here and now. A.B. Yehoshua is one of the few writers who has taken this existential challenge on and it is hard to not speak of his work effusively, with words of awe and admiration.

The evening I spent in the auditorium of the Center of Jewish history on Friday (May 1st 2008), watching and listening to the informal, lively discussion between New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, and his old friend, A.B. Yehoshua was yet another experience of awe at this writer’s capacity for depth and mastery. As is always the case, hung photographs on the walls of the holocaust and the rebuilding of shattered lives in the Center played their central part in defining Jewish collective memory. The Jewish Palestinians of the time before 1948, are marginal to say the least. They have not and continue to not carry any weight in the current spectrum of politics. They are light baggage, easily blown to the winds.

Yehoshua was born in 1936 in Jerusalem. He lived at a time before the major Zionist movements in Europe formed the state of Israel.He lived another Israel/Palestine perhaps.

A friendly, warm-hearted and chubby man with wild curly gray hair, he seemed like an unlikely choice for such a dark load. Like the character in his novel, “A Woman in Jerusalem,” he ‘had not sought such a mission now, in the softly radiant morning, (but) he grasped its unexpected significance…’ In the beginning of the interview, after asked a few general questions, Yehoshua gave the audience his own version of the history of Israel as a nation. He knew Jerusalem intimately. He stressed that immediately after 1948, when statehood was won, he and many Jewish intellectuals wanted his writing to be about a return to the individual as his own center, to surreal and existential realms. To hear his clear description of an earlier Jerusalem was fortifying and confirming.

Ghosts were resurrected but spoke as truths seldom heard. Before 1998, Israel was still a frontier with opened borders, he explained, Arab Israelis and Palestinians sat and smoked in cafes and nightclubs in Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Israelis went
night-clubbing in Rammallah and in the Gaza strip. The ubiquitous use of the word ‘zionism’ these days is like putting ‘catsup’ on everything. What does it mean? He asked. It was only intended to mean there should be a state of Israel, and it only applied to the formation of the State by 1948. After the State was achieved, it stopped meaning anything. It is just some sauce people throw on everything, he said, just the easiest and most convenient condiment.

What has happened in Israel and Palestine now for Yehoshua is a deadening of human empathy. Israel is now a swelling chaos, like the Jerusalem weather in “A Woman in Jerusalem,” which he describes like this: ‘From the overhang of the handsome tiled roof cascaded not one storm but many, each more torrential than the last. It was
as if the earth, having lost all hope of emptying the sky in a single downpour was draining it in stages.’

“Once when a Palestinian boy was killed, all Israelis mourned and felt pain,” he explained, “now they say — well, why don’t they care about the ones we have lost to suicide bombers?’ It’s a different place, he continued, a time of disconnection, historical distortions; the wall between the Israeli and Palestinians is just as metaphorical as it is concrete. And memories of a time when Palestinians and Israelis felt good about each other are rarely conjured up by the new Israelis, a silence around the recent past has been built as strong as that wall. The 1920’s
through the 1940’s in Jerusalem are not alluded except as precursors of the on-going border struggles experienced in Israel today.

Yehoshua calls this deadening of human empathy the ‘black plastic that wraps the dead bodies’.Faceless, nameless except to their own side, victims arrive at the cemetery stripped not only of their lives but of any possibility of re-engaging with the living as individuals, real fellow people.

Critical, too, of how some Americans and Europeans claim the Israeli experience without having lived it, he expressed frustration about the fantasy so many have about Israel here in the States. Paraphasing his own words, he told the audience: “Tell them to come and let them see for themselves what strange and very
wrong ideas they have about Israel…”

When asked by an audience member if Philip Roth’s portrait of the alienated Jew who feels he doesn’t belongs in Israel represents the majority of Americans, Leon Wieseltier, laughing, remarked: ‘No, no not enough of a majority! Look at all the settlers!’ And Yehoshua added, laughing too, ‘Yes, I am hoping many more Americans will start to feel like strangers here, maybe they’ll stopped building settlements!’ No one feels the bitter unfairness of the generalized reproach and impressions that Israel’s innate ‘zionist ggressiveness’ is of the horrendous state of things more than Yehoshua. But no one feels more strongly that Jerusalem belongs to all three religions, too. For him, Jerusalem belongs to the entire world, not to one group, not even just to the Jews. He has been active in the Peace Talks and critical of the new Israel, he says what only a older citizen of Israel/Palestine who has once been filled with sweeter memories could say: ‘We need peace because you see, we are neighbors. These Arabs and Palestinians, they are our neighbors. We are not separated by the ocean as you Americans are from from the people of Iraq you are fighting. After 1948, many families were separated and friends turned against each other…’

In “A Woman in Jerusalem,” the resource manager of the bakery is ordered to investigate the murder of a firstly anonymous cleaning lady. The woman, it turns out is from Russia, and she wasn’t even Jewish. She was killed by a suicide bomber and the company has no kept records of her employment with them. What unravels is a story
about the loss of some ability to love. She is a beautiful woman and the divorced manager falls in love with the idea of her, from pictures he finds in her lost files, and stories about her. His love is a love he can’t have with the living.

Mr. Yehoshua is married to a psychoanalyst and he spoke profoundly about the necessity of the writer to look internally, to write from a personal ‘inclination’. To be driven to write what he must, rather to write from a ‘moral obligation’ to society, even as embattled a society as Israel’s. If the ‘inclination’ isn’t
stronger than the ‘obligation’, he explained, ‘and all that history feels too heavy.’ The depth of that inner look and psychological starting point is vital to the broader sweep from which the novel will grow. The eye of the storm is always personal and begins in the personal, only through that gateway can the writer eventually encompass his surroundings and the society he exists in with all its pressing moral urgencies. Otherwise, we are left only with one-dimensional ideologies in the novel, dogma, the waste products of too many tired minds weighed down by all that history. For Yehoshua, the novel’s purity of vision depends on a
confrontation with and truthfulness about one’s internal, individual life.

No other writer I have read, expresses that purity of the individual self and the cultural collectivity that self must inhabit more poignantly and lucidly than A.B. Yehoshua.–Leora Skolkin-Smith

A quick fyi: Yesterday, Stanford Continuing Studies opened up registration for its summer lineup of online writing courses. Offered in partnership with the Stanford Creative Writing Program (one of the most distinguished writing programs in the country), these online courses give beginning and advanced writers, no matter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gifted writing instructors.

Registration opened yesterday, and some of the classes are almost full. Classes will start during the last week of June. For more information, click here, or separately check out the FAQ.

Caveat emptor: These classes are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I wholeheartedly believe in these courses, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

Summer Courses:

• Introduction to Creative Writing
• Novel Writing: Making a Great Debut
• Short Story Writing
• Creative Nonfiction: Beginning Your Book
• Creative Nonfiction for Magazines
• Fiction Writing: The Short Story Cycle
• Poetry: Writing the Moment

By the way, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and want to keep the mind engaged, give some thought to Stanford Continuing Studies. Our full summer catalogue is here.

Jazz fans, here you go. A list of the most essential jazz albums compiled by David Remnick (editor of The New Yorker) and Richard Brody.

And, for the fun of it, I’m throwing in a video of David Brubeck playing the classic ‘Take Five’ circa 1961. (Also find it on our YouTube playlist.)

(May 13, 2008) - I was online earlier today and read that artist Robert Rauschenberg died yesterday of heart failure. He was 82. The New York Times called him a “Titan of American Art.”

First off, isn’t it funny how the legendary-sized compliments flow after you die? We need to get into the habit of complimenting people while they’re ALIVE. Praising me while I’m dead does me no good, but a nice comment while I’m alive might actually get me through another day.

Anyway, I feel the need to just sit here for a moment and talk about someone I did not know. I’m not an expert on Mr. Rauschenberg or his work, but I DO remember the times when I saw his work for myself in places like the Fisher Landau Center which has a great Rauschenberg collection or the Museum of Modern Art or even the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

(May 13, 2008) - I was online earlier today and read that artist Robert Rauschenberg died yesterday of heart failure. He was 82. The New York Times called him a “Titan of American Art.”

First off, isn’t it funny how the legendary-sized compliments flow after you die? We need to get into the habit of complimenting people while they’re ALIVE. Praising me while I’m dead does me no good, but a nice comment while I’m alive might actually get me through another day.

Anyway, I feel the need to just sit here for a moment and talk about someone I did not know. I’m not an expert on Mr. Rauschenberg or his work, but I DO remember the times when I saw his work for myself in places like the Fisher Landau Center which has a great Rauschenberg collection or the Museum of Modern Art or even the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

I’m smiling right now because when I think of Mr. Rauschenberg, I think about his GIANT, framed, pop, mixed-media pieces that always give me a sense of historical references, urban hipness and this feeling of rustic modernity. I have NOT read what anyone else has said about him. I’m just taking a moment to be
in the moment of my own memory of the man’s work which I’ve seen with my own eyes.

My somewhat cloudy memory is giving me images of soldiers, black birds, city streets and spliced-together, sepia-toned photographs of things … exactly what I cannot recall … however I’m continuing to smile because I’m feeling myself standing in the presence of his work inside these museums and the word that comes to mind is … communion. I feel that as an uneducated observer of art, I actually GOT what he was doing. For me, his splicing and dicing was about slicing life … making connections of wayward things and times, perhaps with the hope of making sense of it all … or maybe not.

Even though I never met Mr. Rauschenberg and will never own any of his work, I feel connected to him through my observations of what he leaves behind and the fact that he was a famous artist who was actually alive during my own lifetime. I wish that I could say something profound about him that would set the world ablaze, but all I can say is that I’m still smiling as I’m typing these words. He’s gone, but his spirit is in my smile. I can just feel it. Communion. A moment of silence.

From now on, whenever I happen upon a Rauschenberg during my art museum visits, I’ll say, “Hey Robert!” Then, I’ll stand there and bask in the presence of a titan … and as always, smile.

MICHAEL CORBIN IS AN AVID ART COLLECTOR AND AUTHOR OF THE NEW BOOK, “THE ART OF EVERYDAY JOE: A COLLECTOR’S JOURNAL.” CHECK IT OUT AT
WWW.ARTMAESTROGALLERY.COM

A year or so ago I was made aware of a non-Aboriginal Australian artist who was passing himself off as an Aboriginal Australian artist and making quite a bit of money in the process. The artist in question was born in Sydney but spent time during his teenags years at a school in a particular area of Australia’s Northern Territory that has produced many of the most well known and highly valued Aboriginal Australian artists. According to this artist’s profile on the website of the gallery that represents him, during his time in the Northern Territory he was exposed to the artistic practise of the indigenous people and was later taught to paint in the traditional Aboriginal x-ray style by an Aboriginal Elder. The art gallery that was selling the work of this fraud did nothing to alert potential customers to the fact they might be purchasing works of art that looked the same as that produced by geniune Indigenous artists but were by an artist who was not an Aboriginal Australian. Because a style of painting is not protected under Copyright Law it is not illegal as such for this artist to paint in the style of Aboriginal artists, but it is illegal for the artist to promote himself and present himself as an indigenous artist when clearly he isn’t.

After many years of misleading the public and misrepresenting himself, this artist was reported to the the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission who agreed with the complaints that had been made, and consequently put measures in place to stop this artist continuing the misleading and deceptive practices that led to the complaints. The artist and the gallery that represented the artist were not particularly pleased about the ruling but when an artist is clearly exploiting the culture and artistic practice of the Australian Aboriginal people for their own financial gain there is no other option but to put a stop to it. Instead of being unhappy about the ruling the gallery should instead be glad that they have the chance to regain their credibility after their reputation was tarnished because of their association with a fake Aboriginal artist.

There have been many different cases such as the one I have described above. On of these was the case against Australian Aboriginal Art Pty Ltd who were accused of selling souvenir items which were promoted as being made by Aboriginal artists and were “certified authentic” when in fact they were not. It was found that a majority of the artists who produced the souvenirs were not Aboriginal, or of Aboriginal descent, and that there was no authentication process that could justify the label “certified authentic” which resulted in a ruling that the practices of the company selling the items were in contravention of the Trade Practices Act.

It is extremely unfortunate that there are people out there who are willing to exploit the artistic talents of other artists for financial gain, especially when they are taking money away from a people who are in desperate need of the money. One can only hope that with more education and information people will become aware of this problem and report people who are selling fake Aboriginal art and souvenirs.

In the world of artists, there are some who excel to an extent that it isn’t fair to allow them to work without mention. Benone Olaru is one of them.
Born in the heart of Transylvania, in a small city called Hunedoara, he has made the unusually high quality of his work known throughout Italy, making statues honoring among others, the bicyclist Marco Pantani after his tragic downfall and death. There is more to the work than just an incredibly high level of technique, as all of his sculptures speak from the spirit of Eastern Europe in an almost Byzantine way.
Rumania, where this artist comes from, is one of the most economically impoverished countries in Eastern Europe. Yet their government employs huge groups of Rumanian artists to realize public projects throughout their country. Our own country is at this moment in our history, one of the most culturally impoverished in the world relative to its per capita income.

The National Endowment for the Arts has no database of living American artists working in the United States, nor do they have any plans to establish one, according to Sarah Cook, executive assistant to the Chairman. Many countries with far fewer resources do, and in fact, it’s such an easy thing to put together. The NEA’s website might add a page where artists could enter their own information, or where museums or other organizations involved with living artists could. In a matter of months, with no involvement from staff other than set-up, a list could be close to completeness; with just the smallest amount of advance publicity to create awareness that this was being done. It would certainly better this organization’s abysmal standing with American artists, whether or not it actually had any effect on their careers.

Benone Olaru felt the need for other influences, so he went far and wide to other parts of the world to refine his already prodigious skills. He went to Korea to work in granite, and after a few years there, settled in Italy where he works today. His studio is full of every manner of hand made tool you can imagine, because apart from being a sculptor, he is skilled at working with a forge and at tempering steel. He works in wood as well as stone, and large figures dominate his studio. The style is almost archaic, with many religious references, and reveals a continuation of a tradition while still being influenced by the events and feelings of contemporary society.
Ever in motion, and as detached as he is from his origins, he has become a gatherer, collecting inspiration from the new things he sees while keeping and using everything he’s picked up in other places along the way. Many of his pieces portray motion, which in his own life is a constant because of his extensive travels, and in this way his message is completely sincere. He speaks of what he knows.
In our own efforts as artists, there is something we all can learn from this. We might find ourselves questioning what to devote our energies to, how to find a subject and a way of expression that others around us, our viewers, our patrons, and prospective new clients, will find persuasive and profound. Many artists try to create the image of themselves as a seer, a mystic, someone above the level of those viewing their work.

Expressiveness in art is mostly beyond the control of artists themselves. When an artist’s intent is to have a certain effect on their viewers, to amaze them and awe them, the formula works only until those viewers are able to understand what they are looking at, and what the intent was that produced it. At that point, it is diminished, like when you first see a magic trick, and then come to understand how it was done.
It is much better, therefore, to keep your secrets, and the best way to do this, is not to have any. A natural and sincere expression is already so complex that even the artists themselves don’t really understand how they came to have produced what they have made, or the millions of nuances that find their way into the work without them having made a conscious effort to place them there. These are the works you can look at time and time again, yet each different day, and mood, will produce new sensations.
In every work, and certainly included are those works that use tricks to grab the attention of viewers, there exist these millions of unintentional nuances. When a trick is used, however, for example the slashed canvasses of Fontana, those nuances are eclipsed by that one-dimensional, overpowering element that the artist has intentionally put there, and become impossible to see, as it is impossible to see the details of the cloud surfaces a few degrees to the left or right when you’re staring at the sun. This is the risk the artist takes when creating signature works that can be recognized simply because they’ve put a patent on one silly trick in order to get attention. One dimensional, simple, and incredibly easy to look at only once. The school of facile art.

Technique can’t produce a never ending flow of emotions either, for in effect it is just another trick. But if a balance is achieved between sincerity, spirituality, and beautiful workmanship, then the feeling it can produce is that of a concert, a harmonious gathering of a number of elements working together in synchronicity.

John the Baptist is the most developed of Benone’s work that I have ever seen. There is extraordinary detail in the curls descending from the head, and it is beyond my comprehension as a stone sculptor how these elements were made in granite! This is not a forgiving stone, it is one that destroys tools, blunts chisels, and tears the diamonds off stone saw blades. I have rarely seen this kind of three dimensionality given to marble works, let alone to granite. But as a professional, I see these tour de forces; I am sure someone who doesn’t carve stone would not. And that is something that makes this work strong. It looks as if it had been done effortlessly as much as I know it was not.
But it is the spirituality of the piece that paralyzes me in front of it. It is not an anatomical reproduction, rather it has the kind of exaggeration common to Michelangelo pieces like the Moses that tell a story and become theatre. The elements of design allow the viewer to associate freely with the biblical story, and make sense of the total picture. At this point Benone’s job is to tell the story and choose colors and shades to make it his own.
The result shows he is a master of his chosen media.