It's a Good Moment to be a Black Artist in the U.S.

 "Despite the really horrific climate we've reached, it still doesn't distract me from the fact of how amazing it is to be a Black artist right now,'' Brooklyn sculptor Simone Leigh told the New York Times upon being selected to represent the U.S. at the 2022 Venice Biennale.

That was the lead paragraph of an article I wrote on Oct. 15.  You can find it here.

In a similar vein, the New York Times led it's Nov. 2020 "Weekend Arts" section with an extensive write-up of Derek Fordjour, a Black artist who paints, sculpts and makes film and video.

"I'm benefiting from a moment," he told the NYT, echoing the sentiments of Ms Leigh. "I recognize that I'm an artist in society and when society goes and moves in a different direction I've still got to be rooted in what I'm doing."

Where society, as represented by the art world, is going now is in the direction of strongly promoting the work of Black artists, not necessarily unfairly in view of a certain amount of neglect if not outright discrimination in times past.  But the point is, times have changed, for the moment (as Fordjour put it)  at any rate. White privilege has been replaced by Black privilege and artists like Mr. Fordjour are clearly enjoying their recognition.

According to the NYT, Fordjour "was a market sensation in 2019" as evidenced in part by the sale of one of his paintings at auction for a price double the estimate. And, the paper noted, he was sued last March by a former New York gallery owner for not living up to an agreement allegedly made back in 2014 to deliver 20 canvases. The case, which Fordjour's attorneys are seeking to have dismissed, is still pending. But it is illustrative of the current state of demand for the artist's work.

Fordjour, now 46, had a considerable climb up to his current prominence. It took 20 years from his first stab at art school to his first museum show earlier this year at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. That followed a commission by New York's Whitney Museum to create a mural near its building. entitled Half Mast (2018). It depicts a crowd of people with some depicted as rifle targets as a commentary on violence in the U.S. against people of color.

The New York Times write-up of Fordjour was occasioned by a current show of his works, entitled "Self Must Die," at New York's Petzel Gallery. It runs through Dec. 19. At a full two and a half pages of a section that ran only 14 pages, that's definitely indicative of "the moment."

A Little Help From Manohla Dargis on What Women Want

"Like many women, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to move through the world. How to walk with confidence but not too much swing. How to stand with my shoulders back without sticking out my chest. How to smile, like a nice girl. How to cross my legs, like a lady. How to speak up, within reason. How to take up space but not too much. Yet I love watching women who take up space, who swagger and sometimes wildly crash."

That quote is the first paragraph of a recent article by New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis and it is interesting in the context of writing fiction. How should women be depicted (much, of course, depends upon the era in which a story is set) and what do they want?

In a nutshell, Dargis wants to see women in action and the more extreme, the better. She's an advocate of what one might call "the alpha-female." As is the case with respect to the proverbial alpha-male -- a stock character of popular fiction -- the alpha-female is a person who exerts control over other people and her environment. She makes things happen and if people get in her way, they better have more physical clout than she has.

Among others, Dargis points to actress Charlize Theron who she praises for kicking butt "again and again" in "Atomic Blonde," an action thriller released in 2017, and who now stars in "The Old Guard," described by Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday as "a violent, fantastical action thriller about a group of supernatural mercenaries."

"The Old Guard" has recently received a lot of critical attention because it is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and as such, is said to be the first graphic, or comic book-based, film directed by a black woman.

The secret power of the supernatural mercenaries is that they are impossible to kill -- sort of like kick-boxing cockroaches, one suspects.

One of things Dargis said she liked to watch on YouTube were stunt videos from action films centered on women.

"Only recently did I grasp that the behind-the-scenes videos I was looking at were showing women kicking and punching their way to different kinds of female representation," she said.

This is in sharp contrast to women of the relatively recent past.

"In the films I saw growing up in the 1970s, including those from the classical era, women didn’t register as especially physical unless they were swimming, riding a horse or dancing, like Eleanor Powell and Ginger Rogers, whose athleticism was bound up with the feminine ideals of their era. Women in movies — the stars, at any rate, the desirable and desiring ones — were elegant, small, tidy and contained, even at their curviest," Dargis said.

"And then," she continued, "there was Shelley Winters, whose heroic swim in the 1972 disaster flick 'The Poseidon Adventure' destroyed me. Her matronly Belle, a former competitive swimmer, takes the plunge to save the leading man. She succeeds but dies."

We're all familiar with the objectification of women -- the male gaze. But it seems women can objectify women as well.

Here's Dargis again:

"There’s a potent feminist critique that women have long been made to be looked at for male pleasure in movies and elsewhere. But women also look, and the female gaze always complicates that dynamic. Winters’s big, powerful, fish-pale thighs complicated it for me."

There's more on that theme (the female gaze) in the article by Dargis plus and a lot more on how violence -- as brutal as possible -- becomes women. Who needs men at all, one begins to wonder, except perhaps as a punching bag when women aren't slugging it out with each other?

But back to "The Old Guard" and it's director.

In the above-referenced Washington Post article by Ann Hornaday, Prince Bythewood is quoted as that her identity as an African-American woman informed every decision she made, some of which involved making sure fight scenes were depicted from a different angle than the usual "white male gaze."

One scene in particular -- a fight between two women on a cargo plane -- was said to be particularly sensitive for the director.

"I didn't want anyone to look at that and say, 'That's a sexy cat fight' [as white, but not males of other races, apparently would]," Prince-Bythewood was quoted as saying. "No, I want you to see two badass women going toe-to-toe, but also see their vulnerability within that. Because for me that's what badass is: that swagger, that strength, but also empathy and vulnerability."

Anyway -- all of the above is offered by way of providing a few clues to help those interested in coming  up with a contemporary answer to the age-old question: "what do woman want?"

A Charming Little Tale On The Role of Language by Rushdie

The Nov. 23, 2020 issue of The New Yorker features a charming little tale by Salman Rushdie on the the role of language, and the importance of freedom of expression, in a functioning democracy. It's charming in that "language" (not any particular one) is depicted as a person of the female gender and like an actual person, can suffer certain indignities.

"She fears she may be decaying. It’s even possible—though it’s hard for her to admit this, even to herself—that she may die.

"Nobody’s listening."

"Nobody cares."

Nominally, the main character in "The Old Man in the Piazza" is an elderly individual who is first an observer of an era of strict Political Correctness when no one is allowed to say anything negative about anyone or anything.

When that era ends, people argue about everything and the old man, possibly because he has presumably been around long enough to have accumulated wisdom, becomes a popular mediator, at first reluctantly, but then with a sense of enjoyment. But, alas, his popularity becomes so great that people are afraid to disagree with him -- bringing on what is arguably a new era of Political Correctness.

At this point, Lady Language has had enough and begins to scream uncontrollably although at such a pitch no one can hear her and, gathering up her skirts, she departs the position in the piazza she has occupied for eons, at one time surrounded by young men who where presumably certain poets of an earlier age consumed by the beauty of language. But they are long gone.

The result of the exit of Lady Language: "our words fail us" and no one knows what to do about anything, including the old man, who if actually wise can't impart wisdom any more.

In the usual New Yorker interview that accompanies the publication of short stories, Rushdie says he prefers an argumentative society to that in which speech is controlled. "The ability to have such disagreements is what one might call 'freedom,'" he said, noting that this applies to all societies and that no great import should be attached to the seemingly Italian setting or to references to certain topics, such as denigration of immigrants (Rushdie being one) that appears to reference the prevailing Trump era here in the U.S.

When an Artist is a Celebrity, Role Confusion Can Result

 When an artist becomes sufficiently well known, he or she acquires an additional identify: that of a celebrity and suddenly that person's persona is as important if not more important than the art.

Such appears to have happened with respect to German artist Neo Rauch, the subject of a Nov. 11, 2020 New York Times article on a topic that has gotten a lot of interest in recent years: the apparent rise of a new right wing movement in Germany.

What triggered this was an incident last spring in which a German art historian named Wolfgang Ulrich argued that Rauch was contributing to the country's right-wing drift because Rauch had made public statements criticizing political correctness. The operative word was "statements" -- as opposed to, for instance, "paintings," which is Rauch's artistic medium.

Lets think about that for a moment.  If Rauch had not become a prestigious artist thanks to the quality of his work (The New York Metropolitan Museum has given him a solo show), no one except perhaps persons in the immediate vicinity of his remarks, would have cared in the slightest what he had said. But as a celebrity, those words were another matter.

Ulrich, the art historian, seemed to realize he was walking on thin ice because, according to the NYT article, he went on to claim that Rauch's alleged right-wing sentiments were reflected in his art as well because the surrealist worlds he creates on canvas constitute refuges from "a contemporary society he hates." In other words, there is nothing obviously and explicitly right-wing within them.

In view of his contention, one wonders if Ulrich would thus conclude that every person who plays an on-line fantasy game, often taking on another identity in the process, is doing so as a means of taking similar refuge and thus has right-wing inclinations as well?  I don't think so.

Ulrich's apparent failure to be able to point to any explicitly right-wing leanings in Rauch's paintings squares with prevailing views among art critics generally. While the paintings have been interpreted as signaling a sense of alienation, they haven't been identified as pointing in any particular political direction as an alternative.

Wikipedia, for instance, quotes art historian Charlotte Mullins as saying that while the paintings suggest a narrative intent, closer scrutiny immediately presents the viewer with enigmas: "Architectural elements peter out; men in uniform from throughout history intimidate men and women from other centuries; great struggles occur but their reason is never apparent; styles change at a whim."

According to the NYT article, Rauch's work "is known internationally for paintings that blend elements of Pop Art, Surrealism and Social Realism."  They "feature dream-like groupings of figures in garish colors, assembled into horrific or comic scenes."

An example is below:

 

A couple of years ago, Rauch told a major German newspaper he objected to political correctness because it reminded him of the authoritarian regime of former Communist East Germany, where he was born. He also said everyone should be wary of the current "cancel culture" movement.

The point of all of this is: shouldn't one view the flap over Rauch's comments as more in the nature of concerns about the influences a celebrity (in our celebrity-driven culture) might have on what others think rather than anything having to do with art?

 

 

One Way To Look at Poetry -- and the Lyrics for an Aria

 The Nov. 11, 2020 New York Times has a review of "African American Poetry," as compiled by Kevin Young, currently poetry editor at The New Yorker and soon to become director of the Smithsonian's African American Museum in Washington D.C.  At present, Young also heads the New York Public Library's research center on Black culture.

Young's new anthology, at about 1,110 pages, is a roundup of poetry by African Americans over the past 250 years and, among other things, attempts to save some Black poets from obscurity.

The Times review, by Parul Sehgal, was very positive. Among other things, he said, it reads like a form of history.

What jumped out at me, however, was what might be viewed as a definition of poetry by Sehgal. To wit: "Whatever the style, whatever the shape of the vessel, the particular holding power of the poem is clear. More efficiently than almost any other form, a poem can convey a feeling of simultaneity; the past can saturate the present, the future can rear up behind us, a mood can tip between lament and praise song."

I am far from an expert on poetry -- in fact quite the reverse -- but that definition rang some bells for me because I have been attempting to write the libretto for an operetta that would be done in a neo-Baroque style. Among other things, that involves writing lyrics, generally in rhyme, for individual songs, or arias. This is in contrast to most contemporary operas which generally employ continuous music with voices coming in and out, albeit sometimes for extended periods, but generally not singing anything that can stand alone as "a song."

In the Baroque style, which emphasizes the vocal capabilities of singers first and foremost, the lyrics need to be kept very short. That means packing as much meaning or as many ideas as possible into very few words to achieve a result somewhat similar to that described by Shegal above.

Readers interested in the operetta project can check out this page on my author's website.

A New Yorker Story More About the Parents Than the Child

 The latest New Yorker short story, "Hansa, Gretyl and Piece of Shit." by Rebecca Curtis, raises more interesting questions about the parents of the chief protagonist, a young girl named Gretyl, than it does about her. She's a passive girl who tends to blame herself for anything that's wrong and as such, is not that interesting,

Some might argue that's a description of all-too-many girls, and perhaps that's the point. If so, it seems just a bit out of date.

Gretyl's parents are the key to this distressing tale, albeit one with a politically correct ending.

In a nutshell, this is a family of three daughters considerably spread out in years and by the time Gretyl is coming of age, the parents do little more than feign interest in their last offspring despite her increasingly distressed physical condition.  Gretyl's mother is into the nice things of life and her father, a pilot often away, has begun to wonder if he should start over again with a new wife who can give him a son.

Gretyl is depicted as singularly passive and accepting of her plight as an illness, now routine if quickly addressed, takes a devastating hold. Her only friend, a stray cat she secretly feeds, meets a dreadful fate, seemingly becoming a nail in Gretyl's own coffin. But they will be reunited in the afterlife, or so Gretyl eventually appears to believe.

Saved by an immigrant intruder, Gretyl also marries one and becomes a workaholic anesthesiologist not in San Francisco, but in Oakland. And as we all know, there is no there there, at least not a there one wishes upon oneself. Loyal and supportive of her criminally apathetic parents as time passes, she's depicted as a saint.

With the German fairy tale a structural device, the ending is appropriately a mostly happy one -- far too happy when it comes to Gretyl's parents.

The bottom line: Ms Curtis has a prose style well suited to story telling, but she needed a better story to tell. It did serve to remind me that it had been a while since I had listed to Englebert Humperdinck's opera "Hansel and Gretyl" and it's beautiful "Prayer Duet." Now if only one could have come across something like this while reading the story. And hmmm -- in the opera, Hansel is generally played by a woman. Nothing new in opera, but in tune with these times of gender fluidity. perhaps Ms Curtis will consider incorporating something along those lines for her next offering.

- - - - - 

After I posted this review, I got to thinking there might be another way to look at this story. Perhaps it can be viewed as a political allegory even though Ms Curtis made no mention of that possibility in her author interview.

The backdrop is President Donald Trump's run for office in 2016 plus various subsequent statements. Central to his election campaign was a call to strictly limit cross-border immigration ("rapists and murders") and to, if possible, halt all immigration from Islamic countries. In conjunction with this, Trump was widely viewed as seeking the continuation of "white supremacy" when it comes to who controls the U.S.

In brief, the chief protagonist of the short story in question, a teenage girl named Gretyl, is near death as a result neglect by her lily white parents.  Outside, a seemingly threatening, non-white man appears to be lurking and there are reports of break-ins and robberies in the neighborhood.

But in the end, the immigrant, a man originally from Palestine, but who grew up in Kazakhstan (Islamic regions) saves Gretyl and she goes on to marry a Persian-American and, except for one thing, leads a productive life focused on helping people who are disadvantaged. 

The moral: the long-dominant white population Trump wants to preserve and protect are losers and our salvation lies with immigrants and especially, in this case, if they have an Islamic background.

Perhaps Ms Curtis could be encouraged to comment.

Black Writers Make Progress Despite "Systemic Racism"

 We've heard a lot in recent months about how the U.S. is fundamentally defined by "systemic racism" -- in other words, discrimination against non-white citizens, and especially Blacks, is baked in the cake because the country was established on that very basis despite certain idealistic postulates.

Thus, one branch of this theory goes, reform of existing institutions can't, by definition, produce equality and justice. Absent a major transfer of power, Blacks in particular can't get anywhere.

In the face of such arguments, I've been trying to see if there might be a counter-narrative, at least in the arts. Could it be that things aren't quite as bad as it is currently fashionable to depict them?

The Nov. 9, 2020, Arts section of the New York Times  has an item about a woman, who somewhat against the tide, writes short stories and is just having her second collection, "The Office of Historical Corrections" published. Replete with a photo of the author, Danielle Evans, the piece was awarded two thirds of a page.  Not bad publicity!

Ms Evans is Black and what interested me was what she had to say about that. In a nutshell, while there is still room for improvement on one front or another, a lot of progress has been made.

Asked how things have changed, Ms Evans had the following to say:

"I'm less afraid that I'll be the only Black writer that somebody reads or that there will be only one book by a writer of color each season that people are talking about. It's much more true now that you'll hear, 'Here are eight books by Black writers. Let's think about what they are saying to each other.'"

While that's good news for those unwilling to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to making America a better society, it's also good news for Ms Evans as a writer. It gives her, she said, more freedom to write about riskier, weirder material because she doesn't have to worry about being taken as representative of her race.

Where is change still needed?  In Evans view, white writers need to talk more about race and Black writers should be asked to review books written by whites, in part to point out what's missing there. 

"People of color notice absences, we notice the treatment of secondary characters, where the language gets weird. And that's useful for everybody."

There was a time -- well, it seems very naive now -- when the notion of where thing ought to go was "integration." The concept was that if discriminatory barriers could be broken down, we could all be the same despite differing skin colors, religions, whatever. Well, not anymore. Racial differences need to be noted, acknowledged in a positive fashion, explored, understood and valued.

Here's Evan's take on that when it comes to literature:

"We should be talking about race more as a function of craft -- of everybody's craft. Maybe it shouldn't be the first paragraph of every review, but it should be noted that books have a racial context. Conversations would be more interesting for it. Part of the answer is making that conversation more visible in more places, so it doesn't feel hyper-visible  when it's focused on the work of Black writers."

Moving away from race and onto the state of literary fiction, Evans believes it has a future despite many claims to the contrary.

"If I put the right story in someone's hands, it can change their life," she said. In that context, she pointed in particular to Toni Morrison's 1992 novel "Jazz."