In December of 1996, I was a programmer and producer of the Slamdance Film Festival, the punk alternative to Sundance. It was the third year of the festival, and we were still a very scrappy bunch. At the time all films were submitted on VHS tapes. We got over a thousand submissions that year. Each of us would take home a plastic mail bin full of tapes every night to watch, and as you can imagine, a large majority of the films submitted were not of acceptable quality, making my job the cinematic equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. The tapes only had the titles of the films and maybe the director's name. There was no other information to go on. When you picked up a tape from the bin you had no idea what you were getting.

Late one night, faced with a mountain of tapes and a looming deadline, I pull a tape out of my bin. It was a documentary called Perfect Moment. I inserted the tape in the VCR and pressed play. The movie began with the unmistakable, inimitable voice of Maya Angelou piercing the silence of my tiny one-bedroom apartment in Loz Feliz. She was reading not one of her own works but rather an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story, The Masque Of The Red Death, which considering the film's introductory subject matter -- the unrelenting reality of the AIDS crisis -- was eerily fitting. As I watched the first five minutes of the film, all I could think was whoever directed this was a great artist -- not only did this film need to be in the festival, but I had to become friends with him.

But this documentary had a larger scope, as it turned out. People from all walks of life were asked the same question: "If you were about to die, what moment would you remember most?" The film featured luminaries such as Phillip Glass, Edward Albee and Larry King along with priests, gang members, veterans and the homeless. I realized that I had discovered something special, singular and haunting. When the film ended I knew I had made a great discovery. I was ecstatic.

The next day I got in touch with the director, Nicholas Hondrogen, and told him how moved I was by his film. And I was not alone: in January of 1997, the film screened at Slamdance and won the Audience Award. By the end of the festival, Nick and I had become close friends. And over the next decade, we grew as close as two heterosexual men could be. He was at once like an older brother and father figure to me. But in 2007, our friendship ended tragically, nearly as fast as it had begun, when Nicholas died of mesothelioma cancer. I miss him every day, and there is always a small part of me that is empty because he is not here.

Perfect Moment was overlooked by potential distributors, meaning that it was never screened in theaters or on TV. When Maya Angelou died, I immediately thought about her powerful performance in this documentary that deals with truly timeless subject matter. Which, of course, begs the question: What moment will you remember when you look back on her iconic life?

Here is the clip from the opening of Perfect Moment as a tribute to Maya Angelou's life and her work.

Perfect Moment can be rented or purchased on Vimeo here. To learn more about Nicholas Hondrogen please visit www.nicholashondrogen.com.

For nearly 145 years you've come to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, thousands at a time to see men and women fly, but not merely fly -- soar, glide and dance in mid air. You've come to watch the daring amongst us brazenly defy fear and push it back on its heels. You've come to be enchanted by the world's most talented menagerie. You've come for the laughs, the milieu of aromas, an impossible world adorned by dance, bedazzled attire, music and song, to witness human and animal alike fully alive. This "living dream" as Hemingway deemed it, is the most enduring of its kind, yet as dazzling and as amazing as it's always been, it is never lost on those of us who present this impossible world, that in the blink of an eye the dream can be suddenly interrupted.

On Sunday, May 4, 2014 in Providence, Rhode Island at the Dunkin Donuts Center we began the first show of our second three-show day in a row. Bodies warmed and limbered, niceties exchanged, prayers petitioned and on with the show. Let the dream commence. It has been said, at least among its participants that a kind of magic occurs when the curtains part and you set foot onto that arena floor in the glow of those bright lights, in the company of a welcoming and anxious audience. Life as we know it is not welcomed. This is the place where happiness thrives and all things are possible. Yet, even in the midst of the most enchanted place, where nothing is impossible, all that we fear, all that we hope to prevent can break out from the shadows and render a sudden and tragic disruption. And so it was on that unforgettable day, when my heart sank along with their sudden descent, accompanied by that gasp that dreaded audible gasp emitted in unison from the thousands in attendance. I was numb. My mind did all it could not to allow me to absorb what had just occurred, as the man in the top hat and tails hasn't the luxury of reacting on behalf of his friends. But, there they were, our precious ladies, daughters, wives, girlfriends, best friends, mothers all lying upon the ground. Miraculously, every single one of our ladies survived the fall.




Incidents such as these are not new to the world of the circus. We've experienced far worse. Yet, in the immediate aftermath of such events many are tempted to accommodate fear, falling into the illusion that we can foresee every conceivable risk. But, that isn't reality. We're not thrill seekers or adrenaline junkies, we're circus. Thus, we don't forgo who we are because of the risks or the what ifs that might be lurking in the shadows, that wouldn't be living and that wouldn't be circus. The show must go on.

With our community shaken and hollow in the absence of our beloved girls, we entered our next engagement in Hartford, CT accompanied by a spirit of heaviness, and in many respects fear. The lightness and joy that was common in this place of miracles was gone. We were functioning shells not at all preparing to present The Greatest Show On Earth, but an obligation. This wasn't good. Our hearts and minds just weren't present and in our business that can be very dangerous. But alas, "the circus is better than medicine," I recalled. Timely words from a dear friend and fan of The Greatest Show On Earth, named Paul. Paul's affection for all things circus might very well be without peer and that is saying a lot when you consider his affiliation with the Circus Fans Association of America (http://www.circusfans.org), our most endearing supporters. A gifted photographer, our friend is the quintessential gentle giant, who emits joy to the point of tears. When it comes to circus, Paul is the oldest kid I know. Following one of our shows in Newark, NJ, he sighed, "My friend, I'm going to call my Cardiologist and tell him I don't need any meds, just give me circus." Our dear friend would know. This was the first time I'd seen Paul since his beloved wife passed. She was also a dear friend and fan of circus. One can never really know the true nature of another's marriage, but from what I observed their affection for one another was a true sight to behold. It was beautiful. I've never met a man so genuinely grateful for his wife and he was not bashful at all in expressing those sentiments to anyone within earshot. So when she fell ill, as is common in a community such as ours we rallied, sending our messages of support and well wishes, but to no avail. Yet, there he was still his jovial and sentimental self, despite a tinge of sadness, "circus is better than medicine."

As artists and entertainers, particularly live entertainers you can never underestimate the impact of your work. Ours is a service with a reach that exceeds our own limited imaginations, even time. Placido Domingo will never know exactly how many 13-year-olds' lives he changed with the mere sound of his voice, as he did for me as a member of The Boys Choir of Harlem so many years ago. As the legendary Geoffrey Holder was so fond of telling my choir mates and I during those strenuous rehearsals for our Broadway run, "it's for that child in the dark who you'll never meet." My friend Paul reminded me, what we do can also be healing, even life saving, as was the case of a young journalist from West Virginia who wrote to me and praised the show for bringing him back from "the brink of death."

We meandered through our opening day rehearsal and a meeting designed to lift us a bit. Cast and crew alike were in desperate need of our own brand of "medicine," indeed. Bodies warmed and limbered, niceties exchanged, prayers petitioned, but how does the show go on? How does the dream commence in the presence of aching reality? Early in my tenure as Ringmaster I learned a remarkable lesson. It was opening night at Madison Square Garden, perhaps the greatest moment of my career when I received the news that my father had passed away suddenly. I was in a daze for most of that engagement until I met a young lady. She said she'd heard about my father's passing and that she also recently lost her mother suddenly as well. It was their tradition to come to The Greatest Show On Earth together, she told me. "I just want you to know, I'm so glad you decided to perform, because now I don't feel so alone." The artist is gifted with the ability to lift others even in the midst of their own pain.

The evening's performance before a packed and generous crowd at the XL Center was nothing short of extraordinary. Inspired by our brave ladies, bolstered by a boisterous crowd and encouraged by the outpouring of concern and support from fans, friends, family and strangers from around the globe we were brought back to life. Fear, heaviness and doubt were eviscerated by the onslaught of courage and joy it takes to fly, to dare, to soar, to be circus; and maybe, just maybe that inspired performance reached that someone in the shadows who we'll likely never meet. Hence, the show must go on.

Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951), the son of former slaves, lived a remarkable life. He was a homesteader in South Dakota, a bestselling author of seven novels, and a filmmaker who went on to make 44 "race films," the term used for a genre of films made for black audiences with all-black casts.

The films were particularly significant because they more accurately portrayed the lives of African-Americans in the early 20th century at a time when caricatures abounded.

Micheaux's resumé was stellar, Businessman Bayer L. Mack, record label owner of Block Starz Music that releases music by rap and hip-hop artists, wondered why he wasn't better known. Mack was struck by the fact that despite Oscar Micheaux's incredible achievements, his name was almost completely forgotten by both blacks and whites of today.

"I'm a history buff and a compulsive reader," said Mack, who runs his company from Sarasota, Florida. "When I came upon Patrick McGilligan's 2007 biography Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only, I was struck by the fact that there was virtually nothing out there about Micheaux's life, in spite of his incredible accomplishments."

Bringing Accuracy to History
Mack has invested time and money to righting the wrong that has been done to the all-but-forgotten Micheaux. Mack is in the final stages of completion of a documentary about the life and career of the filmmaker. Using Library of Congress archived footage, photos, illustrations, and vintage music, he has been releasing 10-12-minute segments of a documentary of Micheaux's life online; four segments are posted with the final two to follow shortly.

While Oscar Micheaux made inroads in many fields, perhaps his greatest contribution was in the world of film where he became known as the most prolific black filmmaker of the early 20th century, producing 44 films in the span of about 35 years.

The Significance of Race Films in the Early 20th Century
At the turn of the century, the movie business was just getting underway, and the industry was controlled by white men who were trying to master the art form. If African-Americans were portrayed in these early films, their characters were limited to stereotypes as seen by white people of the day. Mammy-type characters, subservient white-pleasing black men, and "pickaninnies" were the norm in these films. As a result, if an African-American could get into a theater to see a film, he or she would not see anything with which they could identify.

Then in 1915 D.W. Griffith brought out The Birth of a Nation, and the power of film was on full display. The movie was incredibly popular with audiences, and its outright racist message re-ignited interest in the Ku Klux Klan. Violence and intolerance against the Negro in both the North and the South increased.

Those African-Americans who were beginning to explore filmmaking wanted to respond. Bayer Mack has documented that William Foster was the first African-American filmmaker (Foster had released a short film, The Railroad Porter, before Griffith's epic). Foster countered The Birth of a Nation with his film, The Birth of a Race.

Even D.W. Griffith felt pressured to respond with a different message, and he produced Intolerance. However, the damage was done. Violence continued and the portrayal of African-Americans in these early films continued to follow negative stereotypes.

Micheaux's Novel
By this time, Oscar Micheaux had successfully self-published his book (first called The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer, later The Homesteader). The novel closely followed Micheaux's story of homesteading in South Dakota.

As his book became better known, he was approached by an African-American film company, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, started by William Foster's brothers. They wanted to bring Micheaux's story to the screen. Micheaux, however, wanted a hands-on role that the film company rejected so the deal fell through.

The Power of Film
Micheaux agreed that Lincoln Films had a point about storytelling via film so he converted his company to the Micheaux Film and Book Company. He raised money to make his first film by selling stock in the company and soon began filming. The Homesteader was released as an eight-reel silent film starring Evelyn Preer. It was the first full-length film made by an African-American. When it opened in Chicago in 1919, the reception of the film was excellent, so Micheaux continued to make films.

His next one was The Exile, his first film to use sound. Here, too, the plot was autobiographical with the central character leaving Chicago to operate a ranch in South Dakota. By 1924, he was showcasing new talent, and his film, Body and Soul, introduced actor Paul Robeson.

Micheaux's films contributed greatly to the portrayal of blacks, and he also advanced the film industry simply by being out there and experimenting with various techniques and processes. However, today he deserves to be remembered for leading the way to create films that told a more realistic story of the lives of African-Americans in that day.

Documentary Available Online
Businessman Bayer L. Mack is in the process of finishing a documentary on the filmmaker's life. Four of the segments of the documentary can be viewed here: "The Czar of Black Hollywood,"

The entire documentary, "Oscar Micheaux: The Czar of Black Hollywood," will be screened at the 99th Annual Association for the Study of African American Life and History Convention in Memphis, Tennessee this autumn. After its release it will be available for streaming; as well as on DVD.

In addition, a profile of Oscar Micheaux can be read at America Comes Alive.

During Black History month (February), I send out profiles of little-known African-American leaders like Oscar Micheaux. If you would like to receive the mailings, write kate@americacomesalive.com and put "Leaders" in the subject line.

Many people associate transhumanism -- the field of using science and technology to radically alter and improve the human being -- with scientists, technologists and futurists. Historically, this has been quite correct. However, today, the transhumanist movement is on the verge of going mainstream. Mentions of the movement in the press have skyrocketed recently. Transhumanist academics like MIT's Marvin Minsky and Oxford's Nick Bostrom are recognized as leading global thinkers. And social media is ablaze with talk of the Singularity -- the concept where transhumanist technology creates an almost unimaginable period of exponentially growing intelligence. Behind this invigorating public push of transhumanism is a group that has historically been responsible for jettisoning movements: artists.

Transhumanist artists have recently been increasing in popularity and numbers. Whether it's metal-welding sculptors, futurist-oriented video game developers or techno-musicians celebrating life extension, there is more of it being created every day, some of it in new forms of media.

When most people think of transhumanist art, they think of science fiction movies and novels. Of course, these forms of art have done much to promote transhumanism and the inevitable tech-dominated future. Blockbuster films like Transcendence starring Johnny Depp or James Cameron's Avatar have recently been shown all around the world. And novels like The Inferno by Dan Brown, Nexus by Ramez Naam, and my own controversial thriller The Transhumanist Wager have significantly increased visibility of transhumanism.

However, today, there are new forms of art also pushing the movement. For example, transhumanist-themed music using digitized instruments and synthesized compositions are on the rise. So is transhumanist hip hop. One such artist is Maitreya One, with his rhythm-infused songs advocating scientific immortality, a quintessential aim of transhumanism.

A longstanding futurist and one of the original artists and designers of the transhumanist movement is Natasha Vita-More. Some of her compelling artistic creations can be seen on the site Transhuman Art.

One of the most well-known celebrity futurists is Jason Silva, whose Shots of Awe -- a mash-up of art, performance, and philosophy delivered through short film videos -- has been massively popular to a younger generation. His recent three-minute film To Be Human Is To Be Transhuman has been viewed over 140,000 times.

Metal-welded sculptures are also catching on, often inspired by transhumanist and futuristic machine-looking themes. One specific haunting image of a robot crawling through water focuses on the dark side of transhumanism. It has been connected to the Bilderberg Group and New World Order themes, and was recently featured by American radio host Alex Jones and his site Prison Planet, which caters to ultra-conservatives, religious people, luddites and conspiracy theorists, many who are skeptical of transhumanism and its emphasis on technologically upgrading human beings.

Perhaps most intriguing, cyberculture is becoming essential to the transhumanist art world. Video games -- an industry now larger and more lucrative than the movie industry -- often focuses on transhumanist themes. Deus Ex - Human Revolution, BioShock and the bestselling Halo franchise are just a few that have many millions of players. Eventually, this video art will be fully merged with virtual reality, where artificial art may become as commonplace as real art. Facebook's $2 billion dollar purchase of Oculus VR, the virtual reality headset maker, is a sign of things to come.

"Enhancement technologies promise the creation of superhuman beauty," says David Pearce, who co-founded the World Transhumanist Association / Humanity+ in 1988 and is also the author of The Hedonistic Imperative, which advocates phasing out the biology of suffering in all sentient life. "Tradition says beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Less poetically, neuroscience suggests that beauty lies in activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. In principle, intelligent agents can use biotechnology to amplify and enrich the molecular signature of aesthetic appreciation beyond the bounds of normal human experience. Artistic creations and the everyday world alike can look sublime."

On the surface, transhumanist art seems like an oxymoron to some. Is it possible to combine the scientific nature of transhumanism with creative works for admiration and improvement of self? The simple answer is yes. Art is not bound by preset rules, which is perhaps why it plays such a special place in society, and why it has the power to push new movements forward. Transhumanism is also not bound by rules. It is, after all, a movement that seeks to improve upon and move beyond what we know and experience as humans. The creation of transhumanist beings -- which we are slowly becoming -- is perhaps the most artistic endeavor humanity has ever dared to pursue. Transhumanist art will help guide us to becoming masterpieces.

That’s the Ticket, 2013, Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 40” x 30”

This painting is part of an ongoing multi-media series investigating ritual, social hierarchy, and isolated feminine energy. See more images and watch the 2014 video piece, Bedroom Scene at EricaRyanStallones.com

The New York Times recently reported on the incidence of artists and dealers taking their galleries to the streets in vans, RVs and trucks. Why? For the obvious reasons--sky-piercing rents in New York City; artists sick of waiting for a gallery invitation; renegades wanting to turn convention on its head; mooning the establishment is fun!

The democratization of the creative is in full bloom. Unknown and über-famous artists in the literary, cinematic and musical realms are no longer waiting around to launch their work. There may be a lot of really bad writing, music and film out there right now (as there ever was), but the playing field is somewhat leveled. You might not have the distribution muscle of the big boys, but if you circulate your stuff and work it really hard, perhaps someone will notice, maybe even the big boys. It's either that or having your masterpiece sit in a drawer for the rest of its formerly stillborn life. So, why shouldn't visual artists and those who market their work take the food truck concept and roll it in their direction?

Not surprisingly, big gun art dealers in New York had a hard time keeping the contempt out of their quotes for the article. Oh, you know, artists will never be taken seriously without serious gallery representation. Excuse me while I buy a painting from an artist squatting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Back in 1990 when we first opened Galerie Lakaye* out of our Hollywood home, where it still lives, we got those same kind of smirking comments from the establishment, but we didn't care. We were covered in every section of the Los Angeles Times over the years, but never in the Art section; and our exhibitions were never reviewed. (The director of the California African American Museum in Los Angeles told me that their exhibits are never reviewed, either. What's that about?) So, we took our gallery on the road back then too; not in trucks, but almost. We participated in every art fair we could find -- from prestigious and expensive trade shows in fluorescent and frigid convention centers to local street fairs. We also took the art to municipal venues, restaurants, private functions, fundraisers, public lobbies and basically, to whoever would let us install work on their walls. And it worked. We met many of our clients at these events, sold lots of art, and many of the artists who showed in our gallery have since gone on to exhibit in museums around the world.

I didn't ask the artists for exclusivity because I think they should be able to show their work wherever and however they can; so the museum exhibitions that followed for some of the artists didn't necessarily happen because of us. They happened because we worked tirelessly, and the artists worked their asses off on their own to create and promote their work.

Dealers provide a valuable function in the art world: the hard work of developing a client base, hosting and installing exhibitions, creating marketing materials on the artist and the work; providing introductions to art professionals and institutions the artist may not have access to, and more, including taking their art on the road. But the world waits for no one, and neither does art.

I say ignore the disdain of backward thinking gallerists and critics in the media and elsewhere, and do whatever it takes to get visibility for your work. With original ideas and technology to hold our hand there's no reason not to.

*I couldn't really write about today's subject without mentioning my gallery. People often accuse bloggers of using this forum for their own sneaky purposes. This may be true occasionally, but for the most part, I'm just writing about what I know!

Remember Las Meninas? Every day the diarist puts his or her mirror up to the world as he or she sees it, scouring his or her own image among others for teleological conclusions. He or she paints but he or she's one of those being painted and even his or her readers receive a nod, as Velasquez does when he inserts a mirror into the background of his masterpiece. So what does he or she ultimately find? One day is filled with manic exuberance and the next bottom fishing for tidbits of hope. Death looms within the canvas, along with ejaculate and moments of speculation--mere hot air. Does he or she ever do justice to himself or any of his subjects? Erving Goffman wrote The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. But can we credit this presentation earned mainly through the facility with words and images or is it no better than public relations hype? Those who can't write a diary or paint are out of the running and simply because they can't or won't doesn't seem fair--if we are to choose the winner, the way television anchors seek to gain credibility by winning in the sweeps. Diarizing like elimination is a kind of evacuation, the literate and artistic man or woman's enema Why go to the trouble of cultivating sensibility if there's no possibility for transcendence? The diarist takes his daily dump and let's out a sigh of satisfaction as he releases his log.




Painting: Las Meninas by Velasquez



{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}

Photo: Jamaal M. Levine

Every life has events of consequence. Those happenings impact and direct the future flow of consciousness. Sometimes, the ramifications remain beneath the surface. In other circumstances, the thread is easy to recognize. If you are an artist, such as Freddy Rodríguez, it manifests in your work.

Rodríguez was born in the Dominican Republic in 1945. He came from a family of artists. His granduncle was Yoryi Morel, one of the founders of Dominican modernism. Creating art as a child, Rodríguez made masks for carnival from paper and starch. While attending a private elementary school, Rodríguez began drawing maps, where he won competitions for his efforts. By 14, he was regularly acknowledged in his geography class for his "best" achievements. One such example was his "octopus in an ocean." Even then, Rodríguez didn't want art to "imitate reality." Rather, he aspired to have the viewing be magical. He told me, "I make art to have people experience something new."

Yet there was nothing magical about living under the rule of a dictator, and the history of Rodríguez's country of birth permeates his oeuvre.

The Dominican Republic was discovered by Columbus, which led the way to waves of European imperialism that would follow. In the first decade of the 1500s, slaves were imported. By 1522, the first slave uprising in the Americas occurred. The island was subject to various power brokers. The Catholic Church sought influence among the populace. The United States occupied the country for eight years commencing in 1916. In 1930, strongman Rafael Trujillo took the reins of power. Known globally for his brutality, his mark on the island was obliterated in 1961 when he was ambushed and killed.



Símbolo Nacional
1990
66" x 56"

In the immediate post-Trujillo years, Rodríguez was part of an "improvised" political student movement for freedom in the Dominican Republic. "The kind of freedom that is denied in a dictatorship," he said. Word got to him-- through channels from those in government--that he "needed to leave." As he related, "Friends were tortured and killed. Things were very bad."

Rodríguez came to the United States in 1963 at the age of 18. Though totally alone, he completed his high school degree. A teacher gave him free passes to the Museum of Modern Art. It was an experience that he was unused to--as there were no museums in his country. He frequented the Museum of Natural History, calling it "a revelation." He sketched at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and went to galleries "religiously."

The loss of Rodríguez's mother in 1964, while he was in the United States, was compounded by the fact that he was "very close to her." He said, "I never saw her again and that changed my life." As a new legal resident of the country facing the draft in 1966, Rodríguez headed back to the Dominican Republic. He then lived briefly in Puerto Rico, where he worked for a steamship company before returning to New York City.

Discussing his early years with me, Rodríguez's narrative was laced with the realities of the challenges he faced as a person of color. "I lived here because I had no choice--but I was not treated well in the 1960s. When I came to this country, a label was put on me--and it wasn't positive."

When Rodríguez resettled in Manhattan, he enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the New School for Social Research. "At that time," Rodríguez said, "you didn't need money to be an artist." In 1969, he reconnected with artist pal Ed Taylor, who was making textiles. Rodríguez saw that it would be "great training." He said, "It was very rigorous. There were perimeters. It taught me how to work with limitations. Color theory was vital." At the New School, Rodríguez studied with Carmen Cicero, who at the time was doing geometric painting. Beyond the technicalities of art-making, they conversed about art history, literature, and the works of other artists. It was in Cicero's class that Rodríguez executed his first hard-edged painting, using the process of laying down tape.

While describing the trajectory of his work, Rodríguez segued into a commentary on the gallery scene and the "business of art." He said, "The art market is so segregated it is unbelievable. How can a Dominican enter that world?" He continued, "A lot of critics are ignorant of culture and content. Carmen Herrera was doing geometric painting in the 1940s. Criticism is from the European perspective. It's also who you are and who you know." Yet Rodríguez maintained that despite the obstacles, he was his only competition. "I compete with myself, and hope that the next one [painting] is better," he stated.

As an artist who prides himself on continual exploration, Rodríguez also pointed to the galleries and critics who had a problem with the fluidity with which he changed techniques and stylistic approaches. "I don't like to repeat myself," he emphasized. His output is prodigious, and his method of creating is rapid. As an aside to potential detractors he noted, "A person is constantly growing and changing, which is influenced by their life...unless they're one-dimensional."

Rodríguez's attraction to abstract art began with his appreciation of the discipline and primary colors of Piet Mondrian. In Mark Rothko, he connected with the emotional qualities inherent in the canvases. Rodríguez saw Frank Stella as a "kindred spirit, an artist constantly challenging himself to do new things."



Recuerdo
1980
42" x 42"

With a touch of irony, Rodríguez pointed out how "those in the art world were somewhat surprised by his works that dealt purely with abstraction. They don't associate abstraction with Caribbean art." He observed wryly, "We can't think in the abstract?"



Political Statement #2
1999
48" x 48"

This very point was addressed in the exhibit, Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A multi-themed presentation, Rodríguez is represented with the group of artists, "Defying Categories." He has three works from 1974 included. Each acrylic on canvas is a narrow vertical, measuring 96" x 32". They exemplify Rodríguez's use of geometry and color to animate the picture plane.

Despite barriers, Rodríguez racked up numerous solo exhibits, nationally and globally, and has been the recipient of many fellowships and awards. He received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, was a Gregory Millard Fellow in Painting, and served as a New York State Council for the Arts Artist in Residence at El Museo del Barrio--an experience he reflected on with great satisfaction. Rodríguez has work owned by the Bronx Museum, the Queens Museum, el Museo del Barrio, the Newark Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museo de Las Casas Reales in Santo Domingo. Corporations such as American Express and Smith Barney have included him in their collections. Recently, he was selected to be in the pilot phase of the CALL program (Creating a Living Legacy), which helps artists to properly document and archive their work and career.

Rodríguez was chosen to design the prestigious memorial to Flight 587. Speaking about his approach to the project, he said, "I used my knowledge of art and my minimalist background. My memorial is filled with all kinds of symbols and metaphors. It also deals with the immigrant experience, religious life, and the occurrence of death. There is a gate. People go back and forth--like the gates of paradise. The openings in the memorial, the cut-outs, they allow light to come through. It is for remembrance. The souls of the dead are captured by the light. For those who are visiting, the memorial functions on many levels. In its simplicity, there is spirituality."



Flight 587 Memorial
2006
11′ x 72′ x 160′

After speaking with Rodríguez extensively in the living room of his home in Queens, New York (not far from where assemblage master Joseph Cornell lived), we went to his studio. Housed in a separate structure on his property, it held racks of paintings, works in progress, a table Rodríguez uses to work horizontally when pouring paint, and sculptures propped against the walls. There was plenty to look at, and Rodríguez spoke enthusiastically about each piece.

"You have to be so alert for the kind of work I do," Rodríguez said. "All my work has some kind of a conceptual meaning behind it. I do think a lot." When we first connected, Rodríguez immediately discussed his affinity and admiration for the renowned Argentine writer Julio Cortázar--who was also a political activist. Words as imagery and as contextual material are integral to much of Rodríguez's output. This is evident in his collage on canvas series, where phrases are juxtaposed with symbolic icons on a backdrop of surfaces that include newspaper, fabric, and found materials. In Paradise for a Tourist Brochure, Rodríguez implements one of his visual stand-ins, butterflies, for the people and country of the Dominican Republic. With the word "paraíso," which translates to paradise or heaven, he presents viewers with a different side of the lush island culture that tourists expect to experience.



Paradise for a Tourist Brochure
1991
66"x 60"

More accurately, the tiny red circles with drip marks read as bullet holes, and the handprints serve as bloody reminders of those who have died from political violence under the iron hand of repression.

In Rodríguez's most recent project, finished in late 2013, he has combined text and painting in the form of a one-of-a-kind book. He has given it the appellation, Mi Joda, which he translates as, To Upset the System. Here, he has incorporated his own words in a relationship with his painting.



Page from Mi Joda
2012
22" x 30"

Rodríguez said, "I think it's my job to keep exploring and learning new things. This was overtly apparent in his studio as I viewed sculptures; images that encompassed responses to the tsunami that destroyed Japan; his endeavor to "transform baseball stats to the visual realm; folding screens.



Untitled
2006
6.75" x 4" x 2"

Included in the blockbuster show Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, termed "the big art event of the summer season in New York" by Holland Cotter in his New York Times review, Rodríguez's piece Homage to Tony Peña is also featured in the companion book. The show will be viewed at a series of museums and in conjunction with a full schedule of programs. It's currently on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.



Homage to Tony Peña
2005

Through the wide range of work that Rodríguez shared with me, and the personal history that he had narrated, his final statement summed up the whole visit:

"My truth is in my art."



This article is from the series "Evolution of an Artist"

Photos courtesy of the artist

The Gift-Challenge

"Life drawing" is an accepted term for making drawings from direct observation of (often nude) models. In any major American city, you can find uninstructed, open-to-the-public life drawing workshops without too much effort. You show up with your pencil and your sketchbook, you pay your fifteen dollars, and you draw for three hours.

I am self-taught as a figurative painter, and the major means of my self-teaching has been such life drawing workshops, first in Los Angeles and then in New York. I have been attending them, on average, twice a week, since 1998. Going by the boxes I keep them in, the drawings I have produced in that time would be around 75 inches tall if stacked atop one another - taller than I am.



Daniel Maidman, Preparatory Sketch for Meiosis VI, pencil on paper, 15"x11", 2014

As some of you know, I scan and post most of my life drawings to Facebook. In my current folder, "Selected Drawings: 2014," I received the following comment a few days ago:



Facebook comment, May 31, 2014

Jerry Saltz is the senior art critic at New York Magazine. We know one another a bit. On the face of it, his comment is pretty harsh and dismissive. That's not the whole picture though. Saltz is compulsively extroverted over social media, but his seeming omnipresence doesn't mean he has infinite time. More people want Saltz to pay attention to more art than any one person can look at. So it's very flattering when he turns up to admit in public that he's been thinking about your work. By his standards, this is a reasonably long comment. All of that factors into its meaning.

What I read in it is that Jerry has been looking at my drawings over time, and mulling them over. He has an enormous framework of doctrines within which my work makes no sense, and yet he finds he either can't, or won't, ignore what I'm doing. In one sense, he is asking me to defend my work. But in another sense he is asking me to make my work available to him too. I would never say no to either request. The first makes us both stronger, and the second makes us both richer.

As it happens, I use Jerry as a handy stand-in for a set of concepts about art largely opposed to my own. As he likes me, so I like him. I don't need to agree with somebody to like them and consider what they have to say. He's pretty sharp, so when I'm figuring out in my mind how to describe what I do, I sometimes find it helpful to phrase it in terms of a response to Jerry's doubts. I had been planning this essay anyway. It's gratifying, though, to be replying to the actual Saltz, and not a fantasy stand-in.

I'm going to answer Jerry's questions by backing way up and taking a running leap at the subject.



Daniel Maidman, Magic Reclining, Foreshortened, pencil on paper, 15"x11", 2013

Why We Life Draw: The Prior Erotic Force

The day after a bachelor party some years ago, I snarled to a buddy of mine, "That's the last time I go to a strip club." He said, "What's your problem with strip clubs?" I said, "I think they're tawdry and depressing, and overall, they're just not my favorite venue for hanging out with naked women." Pause. I looked over. A little vein was throbbing in his forehead. I said, "What?" He said, "Most of us don't have a variety of venues where we hang out with naked women we're not dating."

This is a funny instance of the question one gets asked repeatedly about life drawing: aren't you really just using this as an excuse to hang out with naked women?

I've given this question a lot of thought, and here's what I think. I think that in a sense, yes, we are. Non-life-drawers often assume that life drawing involves a sideways translation of one impulse into another impulse:



But this assumption is flawed. I read the sex drive as a powerful force, but a specific one. I think it is one channel into which a much more profound and general force can be diverted, which I label the prior erotic force: erotic, because it is the force of the life-drive itself, and prior, because it comes before all other forces. The sex process and the art process bear certain structural similarities, not because one is a simulacrum of the other, but because both have a common origin.



A naked woman in the context of the art drive - and, if the artist is a straight male, and serious, a naked man - becomes the subject of an erotic craving, but that craving is not sexual. It is artistic. (1) It has to do not with physical reward, but with the enlightenment that we crave in knowledge of one another as human beings with human forms. The persistence of the figure in art from the first known art objects, down through the present, answers neither to sex nor to chance, but to spiritual necessity. We need to know one another, by means of sight. This will not become obsolete or irrelevant until the brain leaves behind its facial and body recognition circuitry (2), and the soul its desire for companionship and possession.



Daniel Maidman, Leah Seated, Facing Away, pencil on paper, 15"x11", 2014

Excellence in Seeing: Life Drawing as Technê

In modern English, we would tend to draw a distinction between talent and skill. To illustrate the linked concepts, let's consider a clear instance of excellence in both, like superstar athlete Michael Jordan. It is Air Jordan's talent that gives him the potential to become one of the greatest ninjas of his or any age. But it is only through years of training in ninjutsu, such as by climbing mountains, collecting rare flowers, drinking hallucinogenic tea, and leaping from tree stump to tree stump while fighting multiple warriors with a stick, that he actualizes his talent by means of an acquired set of skills.

This model of talent, which is inborn, and skill, which comes from training and experience, is useful in many contexts, but I think it doesn't quite serve our purposes here. Since we're talking about philosophy things, it seems sensible to turn to the Greeks for terminology. I'd like to re-introduce a Greek concept similar to skill, but not quite the same - technê. (3)

The Greek technê varies in meaning over time, but it seems to keep two essential components: a. it involves skilled action, and b. the action is performed in the context of a mindfulness in regard to the purpose of the action, which resides outside the action itself. Technê is the workingman's poiesis.

Aristotle distinguishes technê from virtue (aretê) in that the merit of aretê does not lie in some exterior object. Virtuous people display aretê by choice and character, and its end lies in itself and in their virtue of character. The account of life drawing above, as an activity rewarding in itself because of its relation to the prior erotic force, is an account of life drawing as aretê. Many people with no further ambitions as artists partake of life drawing for this reason alone. It makes their lives better. It makes them happy.

But life drawing for the professional artist also has the character of a technê. Its end lies not only in itself, but in that which is produced. There are two things produced, only one of which is obvious: the drawing. Of course these artists want to make beautiful drawings from their time in life drawing. We can argue beauty another time - for now, let's say that each artist approaches the technê of life drawing with some exterior goal in mind, defined as beautiful/true/accurate/what-have-you (4), by the artist, and the artist strives toward this kind of beauty. The senses of beauty are as varied as the artists who approach the work. And the sense of beauty evolves over time in each artist as he or she discovers themselves through the work.

The less obvious end produced by life drawing as a technê is "excellence in seeing." A moving quotation from Ruskin has been wending its way through the representational art community lately. He describes excellence in seeing very well.

Let two persons go out for a walk; the one a good sketcher, the other having no taste of the kind. Let them go down a green lane. There will be a great difference in the scene as perceived by the two individuals. The one will see a lane and trees; he will perceive the trees to be green, though he will think nothing about it; he will see that the sun shines, and that it has a cheerful effect; and that's all! But what will the sketcher see? His eye is accustomed to search into the cause of beauty, and penetrate the minutest parts of loveliness. He looks up, and observes how the showery and subdivided sunshine comes sprinkled down among the gleaming leaves overhead, till the air is filled with the emerald light. He will see here and there a bough emerging from the veil of leaves, he will see the jewel brightness of the emerald moss and the variegated and fantastic lichens, white and blue, purple and red, all mellowed and mingled into a single garment of beauty. Then come the cavernous trunks and the twisted roots that grasp with their snake-like coils at the steep bank, whose turfy slope is inlaid with flowers of a thousand dyes. Is not this worth seeing? Yet if you are not a sketcher you will pass along the green lane, and when you come home again, have nothing to say or to think about it, but that you went down such and such a lane. (5)

Note how eroticized his description of nature is - channeling the prior erotic force, as he does, not into figure drawing, but nature drawing - and also his implication that excellence of seeing helps to remedy an overly logocentric outlook: the sketcher has experienced the place, but his friend knows only its name.

The technê of life drawing, then, consists in becoming excellent with regard to the ability to make a fine drawing, and the ability to see finely. These are not prerequisites for all kinds of art, but they are for certain kinds of art. New York artist Jenny Morgan has this to say about life drawing: "I have a strong background in life drawing and painting. I have wavered in my practice the last few years, but I think of my life drawing experience every time I draw out my figures on canvas." Consider a couple of her life drawings which, much to my delight, she shares in public here for the first time:



Jenny Morgan, untitled life drawings, pencil on paper, 2006

She follows certain classic strategies here for comprehension of the figure. On the left, you can see how she started with light lines down the structural centers of the torso, arms, and legs. Additionally, she marked the frontward tilt of the top plane of the pelvis. With these spatial markers laid in, she went on to loosely outline the body around them, confident that she would have the proportions and positions about right while depicting the body as a single cohesive unit.

She pursues the same strategy in the figure on the right. She starts with the angle of the spine, the key curves of the ribcage in perspective around it, and the core lines of the legs. She uses here another nearly-universal life drawing strategy: for the mass of the pelvis and butt, she sketches out an ovoid, lightly defining a general mass before elaborating it with the darker outlines of the hips.

She summarizes the work thus: "I never get super detailed or in depth with my sessions - I've always enjoyed the freedom of fast, loose studies." It is this practice of life drawing which gave her part of the technê required to express her particular form of forceful creativity, as she does here:



Jenny Morgan, You to Me, oil on canvas, 92" x 78", 2013

Her vision as an artist involves a conflict between image and its erasure. She localizes the conflict in the figure, but her sense of erasure is not universal across the image, as it is with Richter. Rather, it has a psychosexual topography: the face tends to fade, while hair and nipples and hands retain detail. This complex effect is impossible, in the form unique to Morgan, without the viewer unquestioningly "buying" her figures. Her seemingly effortless, fluid figuration results from the technê she has developed in life drawing and other art-auxiliary practices.

To restate from this specific instance, to the general principle: Practice in life drawing provides the necessary technê for the full-flowered poiesis of art-making itself. If poiesis is the making of a new thing in the world, a microscopic recapitulation of the creation of the universe, then life drawing and related species of practice provide the artist-demiurge with the mighty powers required by the task.

What About the Viewer?

OK, great. But why should anyone actually look at a life drawing?

Let's consider again the example of Michael Jordan. Say he's in his dojo in the morning, practicing his dakentaijutsu with a sparring partner, or even just running the Eight Gates on a mannequin. His Airness must practice daily in order to keep sharp. Because of the supreme development of his bushido, his form takes on a grace of its own, quite apart from any utility it might have in fighting the criminal element. Thus a viewer could well take joy simply in the spectacle of the focused practice of this master.

We turn our gaze from Jordan to his spectator. What capacity in the spectator provides him or her with the ability to take joy in the spectacle of Jordan's practice? There must be two possibilities at least. Either the spectator can take joy in beautiful things in and of themselves, for no reason further than excellence of form relative to the aesthetics of the medium, be it a well-made table, a beautifully-played bit of music, or a display of gymnastic prowess - or the spectator takes joy in the excellence of the constituent parts of more elevated things: that is, while Jordan is merely practicing, the excellence of his practice serves as a constituent part of his more elevated goal (striking fear into the hearts of the criminal element).

Very much of a similar thing applies to the viewer of a life drawing - and I know this, because I have spoken with my collectors about it. In some cases, they merely like beautiful things, and what strikes me as beautiful in my pursuit of life drawing strikes them as beautiful in their appreciation of it. In other cases, they value the life drawings as building-blocks from which more fully-fledged art is constructed. These people appreciate the fruit of technê inasmuch as it is a portent and kernel of the fruit of poiesis.

And, because little in life is really so categorically clean, once in a while a life drawing transcends its nature and takes on the qualities of art per se. And that is a fine thing too.



Daniel Maidman, Preparatory Sketch for Blue Leah #2, pencil on paper, 15"x22", 2011

To Answer Your Questions, Jerry

Running leap: done!

Having built up a context for this conversation, I can now address your note properly:

>Your skill is extraordinary.

Thank you!

>I ask this 100% sincerely.
>Is this 'art' though?

It is not art, and not not-art. It is the product of technê. Without it, much that you see as art could not exist; and yet it is also worthwhile in itself.

>Isn't it just so-called academic figuration?

This is really the crux, isn't it? That "just" tips your hand. If I say "yes," then you dismiss it, because you dismiss academic figuration categorically - you've set it up as existing in opposition to 'art.' But if I say "no," then I have to explain why not, and implicitly sanction the categorical dismissal. I'm not in the market for either of these options.

This happens not to be academic figuration, because I see academic figuration as pursuing a convergent goal: that is, the perfected course of academic study would lead all students, presented with the same visual field and the same assignment of a fully-rendered drawing, to make approximately the same representation. This would demonstrate successful acquisition of a certain skill-set. And I think that this extraordinarily challenging skill-set is worth acquiring. It is a model of total skill as yielding total freedom. This Earth-shaking skill-set is so profound, in fact, that its apotheosis is not yet born. Bouguereau was the Isaiah of academic art, one might say, or its John the Baptist. We are still waiting on its Christ.

But it is not for me, and that's not what I'm doing.

I'm part of a completely chaotic and un-self-aware faction of divergent life-drawers; our work tends to become more distinct over time. But these distinctnesses, like all distinctnesses within a genus, are available only in the context of some knowledge of the genus. One cannot distinguish Handel from Mozart on day one, nor the Ramones from the Sex Pistols.

>I do not question your ability, desire, etc.
>I really like you too.

Let me point out here that one of the great rewards of my life as an artist in New York has been the opportunity to get to know you a bit, and to expand the boundaries of my tolerance by challenging it with your opinions. I do not always, or even often, agree with you, but you have done so much to expand the art available to me, and I am profoundly grateful for that.

>But when I look at this something inside of me dies.

However: this response is not legitimate. It is a failure in you, and it should raise all of your red flags. There is no room in a serious appreciation of art for categorical dismissal, because all categories simply represent sets of aesthetic rules and references. That is, all categories are languages. The language is not the text. A worthwhile text may be written in any language. It is acceptable for a tourist or a layman to ignore a text because they dislike the sound of a language - but it is not acceptable for a serious thinker -

>Again, I do not say this with any meanness or with intent to insult.

- sure, sure - I'm thick-skinned too; no worries -

>This is only about MY tatse, my eye.
>Many will just say my tatse is in my ass & I have no idea about art.
>They could be right.

- and my feeling is that you are, or try to be, a serious thinker about art. You have a responsibility to transcend your taste, to drive your taste beyond your inclinations. A tourist or a layman does not have such a responsibility, but you went out seeking authority as a critic, and you earned it. That authority comes with responsibilities, and one of them is to figure out what it is about the things you don't, by inclination, like.

Now, that said, I think that when you turned up at my drawing folder out of the blue, and left your comment, you were actually working on this very project. I believe that the boundaries of your taste are no longer sufficient for your comfort, and that you are trying to grow, just as I am trying to grow. Contrast two statements of yours. Here's you in 2005:

"...to me 'de-skilled' means unlearning other people's ideas of what skill is and inventing your own. All great artists (schooled or not) are essentially self-taught and are 'de-skilling' like crazy. I don't look for skill in art; I look for originality, surprise, obsession, energy and something visionary. Skill only means technical proficiency. Real skill has to do with being flexible and creative. ... I'm interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or re-imagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks." (6)

And here's you at the end of last year:

"Call me conservative, but it's also time for grad programs to stress courses in craft and various skills -- from blacksmithing to animal tracking, if these are things students need to learn for the visions they want to pursue." (7)

This reads to me as an evolution in thinking. The evolution is toward an acceptance that it is not necessary every single time to re-invent the wheel or to go back to the stone age and make a rocket from rocks - an acceptance that for many kinds of art, technê is the scaffold on which originality and vision are built.

Consider, though, a second thing: even in December of 2013, you cannot quite bring yourself to write down what crafts and skills you really mean. You choose awkward and unlikely skills, feigning random selection off the top of your head. But there are already schools for blacksmithing and animal tracking, and they're not offering MFA's in fine art. The skills you cannot bear to name are drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Now it is June of 2014, and we have not traded ideas in a while, but I come to find you are looking at my drawings, and considering them, and trying to make heads or tails of what I'm doing and why it makes you feel as it does. This strikes me as another step in your evolution. I think, just as I have moved toward seeing art your way since we first met, you have been moving toward seeing it my way as well.

Your way is not a threat to my way. There is room enough in me for both. My way is not a threat to your way either. There is room in you, too, for rockets made from rocks, and rockets made from steel; I am not your enemy.



Daniel Maidman, Drawing of Kuan #5, pencil on paper, 15"x11", 2014

Counter-Gift-Challenge

I have tried to accept your gift here, and meet your challenge: to explain myself, and in explaining, make my ethos more available to you as well. I have no idea how far I've gotten but, like you, I am 100% sincere.

Now let me return the favor, and offer you a gift-challenge in return. Come sit with me once a week, for five weeks, for three hours at a time. We will hire a model, and life draw for two hours, with an hour mixed in for talking it over. I will teach you. I won't teach you a lot, because I'm no kind of a teacher. But I can articulate one or two things, and help you try out doing what I do. I will, of course, be very interested to learn from you in the course of this as well. And we will both learn from our models.

A few conditions go along with this offer:

1. You've got to complete all five weeks.
2. You have to write a bit about your experience.
3. You have to show the drawings you make.

Let me address your objections as best I can anticipate them:

You're chained to your desk - I know. But this is important, Jerry. Seeing art, knowing art, and loving art are terribly important to you. This is an opportunity you haven't had in a long time, not only to expand the range of your taste, but the fineness of your eye. The hand profoundly trains the eye, and the hand goes with technê. Working as I work will refresh and deepen your eye. With your hand still stinging from its exercise, you will bring new insight to all the art you look at. You will see new subtleties of form, new potentialities. Everything will be renewed. That is worth the price in time. This is an adventure.

Your writing schedule is full. Fine - cram it in around the corners somewhere. This is a fun idea. Jerry Saltz, his sketchbook, his figurative painter semblable/frère, some naked people, and a world of concepts to grapple with. It's a good story. It's your kind of stunt. Write rough sketches each week: notes on what you see and do, and feel and learn. Embrace that your outlook is changing. Repudiate nothing but accept everything.

You are a critic and you do not show your art. Let me add to this - your drawings will most likely be terrible, from a technical perspective. You will be tempted to label the deformities of their technique as examples of personal creativity and expression. But just this once, you should not do that. You should say, proudly, "These drawings are terrible! I tried to do a particular thing with them, and I failed!" This is the magnificence of aretê in life drawing, of self-rewarding virtue. You are not here to do a good job - you are only here to try, and to learn from your trying. What glory is this? It is an opportunity to learn as a child learns, without preconception, without expectation, without fear.

- you do not show your art. Make yourself radically vulnerable. Nobody needs you to be good at it in any sense. The validity of your criticism does not rest on your prowess as an artist or a technician. I cannot stress enough how liberating it is to welcome humiliation. It will resound through the rest of your life. It will shake loose your sense of how things must be. Opportunity will flower everywhere.

Besides, you can totally auction off the work and give the money to an art scholarship.

Please let me give this back to you. You have walked over to me. I am walking back over to you. Let's walk together a little ways.

All best wishes,

Daniel Maidman



Daniel Maidman, Preparatory Sketches for Meiosis III and IV, pencil on paper, each approx. 15"x11", 2013

--

ENDNOTES:

(1) For an account of my subjective experience of this phenomenon, see here.
(2) For an introduction to the neurological basis of the phenomena described, see Dr. Margaret Livingstone's faculty page here and buy her amazing book here.
(3) I rely in the material that follows on the excellent discussion of epistêmê and technê here.
(4) What I really mean is my idiolectic term 'kalos," discussed here.
(5) From "The Elements of Drawing, in Three Letters to Beginners by John Ruskin" as quoted here.
(6) http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/writing_wrongs/
(7) http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/saltz-on-the-trouble-with-the-mfa.html

Do you remember the scene in The Fisher King when Robin Williams, totally smitten with the Amanda Plummer character, begins singing, "Lydia, oh Lydia, Lydia the tattooed lady," and you think, "Good luck with that one"? Lydia can't eat with chopsticks and seems completely lost in her world. She even reads romance novels. We know that you can't rate people. Lydia may be Parry's dream girl, but she may not be yours.

We can, however rate a great many other things. Books are rated. The Handmaid's Tale is widely considered Margaret Atwood's best book. The Poisonwood Bible blows everything out of the water that Kingsolver had written before it. Restaurants are rated, movies, plays. There are ratings from critics and ratings by the public, but the general sense is this: in a world of commodities, we can rate things that have an intrinsic value. What are they worth? That experience of the book, the play, the movie, the dinner, what is it worth, and can we put a numerical value on that worth?

Dating a person has no numeric value. You cannot say, "She's a 10 as a date," and guarantee that everyone would agree with you. Even sex, (with the exception of prostitution) is a personal experience. One man's pleasure might literally be another man's pain. One woman's prince might be another woman's toad.

Which brings us to the rankings of the MFA programs. The ranking of the programs has proved controversial. My students first brought this to my attention when I began teaching at the San Diego State University MFA program. Before that, I had never given the matter much thought. I went the PhD route and then went into publishing so the MFA rankings hadn't really affected my life. I have visited many MFA programs to speak on publishing and found students learning how to be better writers and how to build writing community. Some of them get a pay raise in their current job as a result of the higher degree. Most people I talked with felt their MFA program was successful if they enjoyed it and built a community and developed good writing habits. It's very much like joining any community: Church, karate, or being a professional dog person. They each cost money and time, but the benefits are belonging to a tribe of people engaged in an activity that is at the core of who you are.

My students informed me that Seth Abramson, a lawyer and writer, had put together rankings of the MFA programs. Programs like SDSU would never be highly rated because the students get their funding through Cal Grants and that is not considered part of an official funding package. That turned out to be only part of the argument against the rankings.

1. As it turns out, a percentage of the information used to create the rankings is based on applicants. Stop here for a moment because there is no part of this controversy that gets more wrath from MFA attendees. Students are not polled, faculty and administrators are not polled. Applicants are polled and the rest of the information comes from the program websites.

Seth's reason for this is that he feels faculty and staff cannot honestly assess their own program. Faculty are being paid and students would hardly want to downgrade the program which they are attending thus downgrading the value of their degree. However, applicants who have talked to students might have a more honest view of what the program is like. Many argue that's like rating a restaurant based on talking with people who have talked to people coming out of the restaurant. Why not go into the restaurant, meet the chef, talk to diners? If you've never had the experience of the MFA program in question, how would you really know? However, what is asked of prospective students is what esteem they hold different programs in and that esteem is measurable as it happens.

2. Whether or not you like an MFA program is purely subjective. AWP does not rank its programs because their charter doesn't allow for it, but also because they fundamentally believe that part of whether you like an experience depends on you. My husband hates loud restaurants, no matter how good the food is. He wants to think and have a conversation, not shout, but he might be wrong about what you would like. Our kids love noisy restaurants, they feel they are inside a party. Would you like Columbia, Antioch, Vermont, Goddard? Part of that depends on you; however, Seth argues that there are elements most students agree on. One of those is money. How much funding the programs have to give applicants weighs heavily on the rating although this funding does not include state funding.

3. The biggest argument seems to be whether programs should be rated at all. Seth would argue that it helps students to be able to draw comparisons. But, opponents would say that the comparisons are based on faulty data in the first place and it is impossible to measure the overall experience a student could have.

4. Of the many programs I have visited, two come to mind as having a very high degree of student satisfaction. One is the University of Alaska MFA program at Fairbanks, rated 117 in the rankings, and the other is Chapman University in Orange County. It's not even ranked. The reason the students there were successful and happy seemed very simple to me: They were getting what they had wanted and expected. In marriage and family, in job and life, a great deal of our general sense that an experience is successful rests on two principles: One, are you a happy person to begin with, because if you aren't already, you certainly are not going to be happy in Iowa. The second is: what did you think was going to happen? You were going to magically become a genius? People were going to praise every word you wrote? The students at Chapman and Fairbanks expected to have great faculty, be in a small enough program that they could get attention and of course, it doesn't hurt that Fairbanks, Alaska and Chapman's nearby Huntington Beach are two of the most beautiful places in the world. Neither of those programs ranked highly, yet the students are satisfied, they get degrees, they get published and they build networks. This network-building is very important to a writer's life.

We write on our own but it takes a village to get that writing edited and in the hands of the right publisher or editor and then to print and into the hands of readers. I am a writer who works in publishing, and just as Hellenism and the Judeo-Christian ethic are the twin pillars of Western civilization, the twin pillars of my life as a writer and publisher, the organizations that help me make sense of my world and connect the dots are AWP and Poets & Writers. At every writing conference and MFA program where I have spoken, I've recommended attending AWP and subscribing to Poets & Writers. Both of these organizations are helping to keep our fragile ecosystem intact.

The water has been stirred around the idea that students should compare programs before they choose. We should all compare before we choose one experience over another and then make that decision with our heads and our hearts. Poets & Writers has always created dialogue and given us reason to question elements of the writing life we take for granted, and I expect they will continue doing that.

MFA programs can be a wonderful experience. Choose wisely and keep your expectations within reason. I hope as writers we can focus on the two best parts of this whole game: The actual writing and having a few good friends with whom you're having a long conversation about what it means to live a writing life.

I offer testimony for every NYC Council district to support robust allocations in the City's FY 2015 budget to cultural affairs and arts education. As City leadership evaluates multiple priorities for this budget, the first for a new Administration and City Council, I invite it to consider the priorities of New Yorkers weighing in on the creative sector. And I invite New Yorkers to speak up, now and always, for a better New York.



This video offers highlights from a NEW YORKERS FOR DANCE campaign effort, which spotlights local vibrancy by featuring 51 statements from New Yorkers in each of the 51 City Council districts. Timed to coincide with budget hearings, it leverages the power of digital storytelling to draw the attention of City leadership--in every council district, in every borough--to the importance of the arts and culture to their constituents. It is also a call to action to all New Yorkers to engage.

What I am asking for, with peer advocates including the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), New York City Arts Coalition, and One Percent for Culture, is the continuance of baseline funding through the Department of Cultural Affairs for CIG and the Cultural Development Fund (CDF), which supports program grants, and an increase of funding to the CDF of $6 million. With the Center for Arts Education and others who have made arts education their priority, I am also continuing my support for the enactment of a new $23 million allocation to expand arts instruction in the schools.

Background matters. The video above results from an open call to New Yorkers to have the service organization Dance/NYC film statements, first come, first in, by council district--an effort to re-frame advocacy as inquiry and bring multiple authentic voices to the fore. Dance artists were among the first to say yes, but there are other countless voices in and beyond the sector that should be heard. It is only a snapshot, just one step forward to what Lakai Worrell of District 37 calls "a new narrative between all communities."

So, why do dance and culture matter locally? Those who responded to the Dance/NYC invitation tell us via a survey these are the top 10 key words, in this order of priority: community, life, children/kids, culture, express, learn, body, creativity, audience, and health. And as the survey says: community, way above all.

What does "community" mean? I offer from my read of the meanings described in Raymond Williams's Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, a go-to from my research in performance studies, that "community" as used by New Yorkers in this campaign involves both "working directly with people" and "service to the community" and that these are not distinct, as Williams suggests they may be in normal use (page 76). Of the values derived by dance, it is the community it gathers through its continual creation, the community it touches through its performance, and the powerful blurring of these lines to achieve direct action this testimony calls out. I look forward to other meanings further examination and discussion may offer up.

What is accomplished by this campaign is a new, more inclusive account that privileges the words and faces of New Yorkers over the quantitative research data I have used as my foundation in previous testimony. Consider, for example, findings from State of NYC Dance 2013, based on the Cultural Data Project, which show us the importance of City funding to eligible 501(c)(3) dance organizations. The City is the most substantial source of government funding for organizations in nearly every budget range, helping to generate thousands of performances locally, millions of paying attendees, and $251 million in aggregate expenditures.

These hard data demonstrating returns matter, too, but cannot be viewed in isolation. The NEW YORKERS FOR DANCE campaign reaches beyond the 501(c)(3) organizations for which we have the best data, and is creating a wider lens on the reciprocal link between the creative sector and society. It could help make the case for additional budgetary allocations, resource provision, and policy that include the arts and culture in solutions to pressing issues. (Consider, for example, opportunities for the arts that can be identified in our new Mayor's vision for New York, from jobs and economic development to equality for all, safety, sustainability, and resilience.)

Today, I offer up 51 video statements, and invite the 8.5 million New Yorkers in all five boroughs to weigh in (figure from Census Bureau). I suspect that with each story offered new values may be illuminated and the narrative will open up. This is a narrative--if you will, a dance--that requires care in partnering and the willingness to improvise. I look forward to continue dancing with New Yorkers. City leadership, please join me.

A version of this blog was submitted electronically to the New York City Council as public testimony on the City's FY 2015 Budget on June 6, 2014.

Three American women, co-curators of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, are currently engaged in an intense cross-examination of the past 100 years of the practice of architecture in America.



"We are three awesome women agitators!" says Eva Franch, executive director and chief curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture.

"Our ambition is to look at a vast number of projects, familiar and foreign, through the lens of the practice," says Ashley Schafer, editor of Praxis and associate professor of architecture at Ohio State University.

"The interest of the lens is the office itself - the site, the office and the intelligence," says Ana Miljacki, associate professor at MIT.



In the five-room, neoclassical pavilion, they've created a library that surveys every American architect who exported design outside the U.S., from 1914 onward. Documenting the work of 120 firms, they've assembled hundreds of booklets and models, and made them available on walls throughout the pavilion.

"The idea is that we produce a space for research and architecture and making," says Franch.

It's been collectively designed by Leong Leong, graphic designer Natasha Jen/Pentagram, and technology consultants at CASE. The research starts with the likes of McKim Mead and White and Cass Gilbert, reaching back across time and the oceans with firm documents, journals and photographs.

"It's about the office space itself, and what changes," says Schafer. "Generally, it was just a lot of guys looking at models."



The research succeeds in identifying issues related to the practice, with displays in four rooms surrounding a central space dedicated to the future.

That room contains a circular bed, reflecting the curators' belief that the practice has now evolved to an era when work and play are merging. They call the central space the workground of the future.

"Eighty percent an architect's work is now done in bed with a laptop," Franz says.

The curators reached out to aroma-master Christophe Laudemiel to create a custom scent for each of the five rooms, evoking the time and place of its era. It's highly effective, since the sense of smell stimulates and records some of the most vivid impressions on the human mind.

"We like a project that's expansive, where a lot of people contribute," says Miljacki.



Indeed. They're also collaborating with eight partner firms to document what happens at the pavilion for the next six months of the Biennale. They're seeking to record what they see, think and believe, based on 25 issues/topics and 1,000 documents provided by the curators.

The partners are looking at the issues of labor, gender, economics, and governments - to examine how architecture contributes not just to the built environment, but to the world as a whole. The intent is to think not just about how great design affects the world, but how the practice itself does.



A core idea is to ask that architects gather around ideas, rather than profit. "It's an attempt to produce a descriptive field, to think historically - and suggest that thinking of architecture as profit is history," Miljacki says.

Like Palladio before them, they're producing four books from their research at the pavilion, including an archives, an atlas, a manual, and a record of the partners' findings.

In effect, they've created a new kind of history, now in the making.

J. Michael Welton writes about architecture, art and design for national and international publications. He also edits and publishes an online design magazine at www.architectsandartisans.com, where portions of this post originally appeared.

Image 1 by Cameron Blaylock; Images 2, 4 and 5 by David Sundberg; Image 3 by Ezra Stoller.

Photo by Doug Seymour

With great power comes great responsibility. Whereas I could never give up the writing and arranging of my songs, things like footing the bill and promotional outreach I'd love to share with band members. However, they are employees because I am a solo artist and we are 'Brett Gleason'. The creative control and spotlight drew me to this position but the daunting tasks of promoting and funding a career keep most artists at bay, cause them to seek shelter in a collective in which not only is the risk spread but also the reward.

For the songwriter with a clear vision being a band member can be a frustrating experience filled with miscommunications and compromises that can make friends happy but minimize the purity of the original intent. It is a rare quartet who can birth a cohesive idea, each bringing a complimentary piece of the puzzle and whereas it may be a prudent band member who steers you from the cliff, it can also be a game of musical telephone where each person can't help but put their own twist on an idea until it is unrecognizable. Though some bands are greater than the sum of their parts someone needs to take charge and direct the group or it can become a struggle to lead as opposed to a struggle to create.

Making an album by your self inherently takes longer but what is lost in tedium is saved in translation. When one can delegate responsibility, write skeleton songs for others to flesh out, the creative process is exponentially accelerated but the solo artist can learn to play exactly what's heard, spend that extra hour searching for precisely the right sound. Recording my debut LP took more than five years but I now have the exact record I want and can think of no better way to start a career.



Of course not every artist can produce and release a record alone but for those with this option, is it the best route? Many don't have the right temperament or time to get a record out there; self-promotion rarely comes easily. I know I pushed too hard, too personally, burnt some bridges as I learned to navigate being the person and the product. Spreading out tasks such as press outreach, booking and social networking is an undeniable benefit to being in a band as is splitting the bill when gigging, rehearsing and recording. For a solo indie artist such as myself, breaking even can be a glamorous goal and selling CD's for a cab home a resounding victory.

The glory will be all yours but it is a long road there and a hard one to go solo.

For it is on my shoulders alone to assure that 'Brett Gleason' is not relegated to obscurity. The constant emailing, networking and out-reach is emotionally exhausting but who's going to work harder for me than myself? Solo artistry is not for the weak willed or thin skinned and what I previously lacked in assertiveness I've had to develop out of persistence and patience. The work is hard, the cost is great but for the artist with an uncompromising vision, the benefits more than outweigh the detriments.

On a visit to Los Angeles a few days ago I saw enough terrific paintings to last me for awhile. I'm going to keep this blog short -- the images can do most of the talking -- but I do want to tell you that if you love painting you are going to be be impressed by the quality and variety of what you see at Santa Monica's Bergamot Station the next time you drop by.



Robert Swain: The Form of Color
Installation at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2014, Courtesy of the Artist
Photo by Jeff McLane

After making my way through the exhausting L.A. traffic, walking into Robert Swain's installation The Form of Color at the Santa Monica Museum of Art was a refreshing and soul-cleansing experience. The installation, which is described as "immersive" is made up of 12 inch squares of color and is exquisitely and seamlessly installed and lit. I took an iPhone panorama -- the SMMOA is very nice about allowing photos -- that hopefully gives some idea of the unfolding and orderly serenity that one can feel just by scanning Swain's enveloping panels.



The author's iPhone panorama of Robert Swain's The Form of Color

Sitting on one of the benches in the museum's main gallery now feels a little like being surrounded by Monet's late "Nymphéas" at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris: but the clarity and sense of order is unique. I don't think of myself as being a fan of hard-edged painting, but Swain's installation converted me. It is really, really beautiful.



You would think with all those years of college behind me I could say something more original than that...

Moving right along, if you like looser approaches than Swain's -- much looser -- don't miss the spectacular two-man show featuring Ed Moses and Larry Poons at the William Turner Gallery just footsteps away from the SMMOA. The idea for this pairing apparently hit William Turner at Ed Moses' 85th birthday party three years ago when he noticed Moses and Poons standing on opposite sides of his gallery.



Artist Ed Moses with his paintings Edward #1 and #2


Both artists are accomplished veterans -- Poons is 76 and Moses is now 88 -- and the sheer bravura confidence that each brings to their contrasting approaches is thrilling. Moses has a variety of works on view including some of his amazing "craquelare" works -- they are made with acrylic and other undisclosed ingredients -- as well as some "waterfall" and "grid" paintings.




Larry Poons, Diamond Jim, acrylic on canvas, 76 1/2 x 102
inches

Because Poons' works need to be seen up close to be appreciated, I took some iPhone videos of his exquisitely glooby surfaces. Click on the video below for a quick virtual bird walk through one of his canvases:



At Copro Gallery -- in Bergamot's "T" building just north of the SMMOA -- artist Adam Miller is showing four oil paintings and three drawings under the title "The End of Arcadia." Miller's theatrical and carefully staged paintings explore a heavy theme -- the end of the American Empire -- but do so with images that can only be described as challengingly beautiful. After seeing Robert Swain's immersive color installation and the dazzling painterliness of Ed Moses and Larry Poons, Adam Miller's show is going to offer you something completely different.



Adam Miller, Apollo and Daphne, oil on canvas 72 x 48 inches

Miller's paintings -- which are activated by the artist's dual commitments to Humanism and anti-authoritarianism -- show just how carefully their creator has studied Italian art and brought its narrative possibilities into a contemporary American context.



Adam Miller, Night Watch, oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches

Hard-edge abstraction, painterly abstraction, contemporary realism/humanism: you can see superb examples of all three approaches at Bergamot Station all in about a 75 yard radius.

Another art-loving friend of mine has reminded me -- in talking about taste -- that "You have to stir the pot." If you can get to Bergamot Station before Adam Miller's show closes on June 7th and see the three shows mentioned in this blog, I can guarantee that your pot will indeed be stirred.

If you don't like something you see there I will give you back the money you paid to read this blog: which is free. So is visiting Bergamot Station where parking, admission to the Santa Monica Museum of Art and admission to all commercial galleries is also free.


Exhibition Information:

Robert Swain: The Form of Color
The Santa Monica Museum of Art
May 17 - August 23rd

Ed Moses and Larry Poons: The Language of Painting
The William Turner Gallery
May 31 - July 19th

Adam Miller: Twilight in Arcadia
Copro Gallery
May 17 - June 7th

Bergamot Station Arts Center is located at 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90404

Photo: Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory

New York has seen recent Macbeths by the handful, including two star-topped Broadway productions in the last year, but they are best forgotten. Now we have Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth--starring Branagh and Alex Kingston as his lady, directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford--and it is monumental.

The play begins even before the play begins. Upon arrival at the Park Avenue Armory, ticketholders are separated into twelve Scottish clans (signified by colored wristbands and clan-specific program inserts). This is not, happily, prefatory to some sort of Scottish audience participation; rather, it is a method of crowd-control which allows them to fill the oddly-configured hall in an effective manner.

An alarum bell within summons each clan to step through the sturdy Drill Hall entrance doors and pass along a path of paving-stones through a dark, dank and windblown Scottish heath--the ground is peat and puddles, you can feel the damp--and approach an arch formed by what I guess you could call a stone henge of massive boulders. This leads to the inner auditorium, an enormous rectangle with side stages (backed by boulders) at each end. There is a dirt-filled trench cutting through the space, eighty feet long by sixteen feet wide. Bench seating is on either side, rising from ground level into the darkness about twenty rows up.


Photo: Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory

The play begins with those weird witches, of course, in this case suspended in niches of the stone henge like kernels in a hot-air corn popper. Then comes the battle, offstage in the text but very much on stage here. A score of soldiers traverse the dirt-filled trench, which the witches' "thunder, lightning and rain" quickly turn into a muddy morass upon which most of the play is staged. Yes, people in the front row get splashed, and some get muddied; swordsmen crash against the walls like hockey players being slammed into the boards. (At the preview I attended, Branagh--preparing to charge into the fray--seemed to vehemently spit into the crowd.)

This is pretty clearly a different Macbeth. It is indeed played to the crowd; given the long, two-sided configuration, there are about sixty front-row seats. That puts some three hundred patrons in the first five rows, close enough to see the sweat and smell the mud. There is also some body-checking when the lusty hero returns from the field and "takes" his lady, more or less in the lap of the patron in A 14. (The hall has been filled with 1,090 seats; how the action plays from above I cannot say, although I suspect the immediacy dissipates in the upper reaches.)

What we get is a fast-paced Macbeth of two hours duration. The text has been cut, yes; but Ashford and Branagh keep the show in constant movement, with the staging spread along the length of the trench. No time wasted on scene changes, here. Along with the co-directors, the third hero of the evening--and an integral contributor to its enthralling effectiveness--is set designer Christopher Oram, a Tony-winner for Red. (He is also responsible for the 150 or so costumes, finely detailed from the close seats--and built to withstand all that fighting, and all that mud.) There are several breathtaking stage images, including Lady Macbeth sleep-walking on the boulders, twenty feet up; a blazing wall of fire; and the altogether stunning vision of Great Birnam wood approaching high Dunsinane across the Armory's distant, boggy heath.

The cinematic sweep of this Macbeth is not altogether unexpected; Branagh, since appearing in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry V in 1984, has engaged in no less than six filmed Shakespeares. Somewhat surprisingly, this marks his New York acting debut. He makes a powerful and rugged Macbeth, especially from the up-close rows at the Armory. He is well matched by the voracious Ms. Kingston (an RSC veteran, familiar from television's ER and Doctor Who.) The rest of the imported company of twenty-eight is fine, albeit with few standouts other than the Banquo of Jimmy Yuill and the Duncan of John Shrapnel. There is also a presumably-American ensemble of thirty for crowds, battles, and sentry duty on the heath.


Photo: Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory

This Macbeth--which premiered last summer in a 280-seat derelict church in Manchester, England--is a joint production of the Park Avenue Armory and the Manchester International Festival. The two groups share an artistic director, Alex Poots, who founded the MIF in 2007. The play--which appears to be the hottest ticket in town just now--is a major coup for the Armory, originally built for the Seventh New York Militia Regiment in 1880 and in the midst of an ongoing renovation. Macbeth is in for a three-week run of twenty-one performances, through June 22. Catch it if you can, although tickets are scarce.

A note for less durable patrons: Macbeth runs about two non-intermissionless hours, with seating on backless benches (with reasonably comfortable cushions, in the lower rows at least). While the preliminary entrance of the separate clans enhances the experience, it does add to the duration of your time on the bench. The helpful house staff is understanding, so it is possible to delay your personal entrance until closer to the actual curtain time.

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Macbeth, by William Shakespeare and directed by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh, opened June 5, 2014 at the Park Avenue Armory

While a cacophony of media and breaking news buzz around us in our daily lives, I personally need the human touch to help me understand a country or a situation. And for that human touch I turn to art, music or even better, cinema to get me to the heart of the matter.

In Cannes this year, the country of Azerbaijan seemed to leap out at me from every corner. It was inescapable. There were friendly conversations incorporating quotes from Laila and Majnun, the famous poem about the Romeo and Juliet of the East, by Nizami Ganjavi, considered a Persian poet but who is of course, by birth, Azerbaijani.

During the festival it was also announced that my favorite future Arab superstar, mark my words on the super, Adam Bakri had been cast in the Asif Kapadia helmed movie version of the novel Ali and Nino, about a romance between a Muslim Azerbaijani boy and Christian Georgian girl in Baku, at the onset of the WWI. To be filmed in Baku, Azerbaijan, of course, and produced by Leyla Aliyeva, all around cool girl and daughter of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. There was also mention of a film festival starting in the country, at the buzzed about Azerbaijan pavilion.

And then, Torn. A beautiful, touching short film, filled with heart and soul, which also happened to be the first film from Azerbaijan at the Festival de Cannes, screening in the Directors' Fortnight.

The film is directed by Student Oscar winner Elmar Imanov (who won the award in 2012 with his short The Swing of the Coffin Maker) and Engin Kundag who directed Ararat, a short which screened at the Berlinale in 2012.

To talk about plot with Torn would be sacrilege, because the film is about more than a story, and much more than its ending. It's a slice of life short gem, highlighting our human similarities and the same incomprehensions that we complain about here, in the West, shown in a different language, through a separate culture from ours, yet so eerily similar it gave me shivers.

I had a chance to interview the filmmakers but also their actors, the soulfully beautiful Zulfiyye Gurbanova, the silent, impenetrable Rasim Jafarov and the young yet spellbinding (those eyes, the ones pictured above, are his eyes) Mir Movsum Mirzazade. The result was an absurdly wonderful highlight of Cannes for me, one that found me gesturing through questions to be understood and using the Russian translating talents of the film's publicist, who is, by the way, a very personal favorite.

But also an afternoon spent in the company of a group of people from whom I never wanted to walk away, full of joie-de-vivre, excitement at being in Cannes and a "gusto" -- as the Italian call the taste for life, the idea that the journey is always so much more fun than any destination. Oh, and we took some amazing selfies by the beach which I'll cherish forever.

Did I ask great questions? Probably not. Did I get mind-shattering answers. Probably, but a lot was lost in translation. Yet what I walked away completely sure of was the concept of humanity. Our similarities always outnumber our differences, and if we just give "the Other" a chance, we may realize that we're staring at our own mirror image, speaking a different language, living in another corner of the world, but in flesh and blood just like us.

How did you manage to have your actors here in Cannes?

Elmar Imanov: TEAS -- the European Azerbaijan Society-- sponsored the actors to come here, stay here and present the film in Cannes. They are an organization based in London. It was really incredible how they just did it.



Are your actors all professional?

Imanov: The two leads are professional and he (Mir) is kind of professional too. He could not be, he was only thirteen at the time, but now he's acting in movies and plays.

Engin Kundag: He's not really discovered but he's somehow a genius.

Imanov: Working with him was the same as working with them, not like working with a kid.

So how does it feel to be in Cannes?

Rasim Jafarov: Cannes is the first film festival I've attended. And we are the first actors from our country who have been invited to Cannes.

Zulfiyye Gurbanova: This was a dream of mine to come here since I was eighteen, when I took acting classes at art school. And this is a particular festival for me so it's fulfilling all kinds of dreams.

Between Cannes and the Oscars, you are doing quite well!

Imanov: It went well. The two leads also played in The Swing of the Coffin Maker but to the Oscars we couldn't invite them, because we didn't have the help from TEAS.



Jafarov: I feel a part of this and inspired by these events.

Gurbanova: It's a great feeling to have this team that has had success once and now with the next movie is also going places.

Jafarov: Insh'Allah, with the next film we can go to the main competition, for Cannes 68.

This meeting could not have happened five years ago. But this meeting, here in Cannes also means I get to learn something new, today. What is something I need to learn now, from your film?

Kundag: For me the most important thing, the film tries that too, we think that human beings are different from Azerbaijan, or in Afghanistan or London, but when we make microcosms, we see that we're all the same. And what I wish the audience could learn from my films is just humanity. That's what we try to do. If cinema has a purpose, for me it's humanity.

Jafarov: Art will save the world.

Gurbanova: Women are the same everywhere. If you like a man and he's very bad to you, everyone feels the same. Emotions are the same everywhere. Because he in the movie tries to hurt the woman. And that's all over the world. The reactions to a man are deep inside the same, but it may appear different on the surface.

Imanov: This film which is made in a very small country, an unknown society, because Azerbaijan is not a very known country, and has now gone to the biggest audience a short film can have, it means that the people are all connected. Even if they don't know the society, the traditions or the faces, everything, everybody is somehow connected to each other. Not only through Facebook, but through values.

All images courtesy of Silversalt PR, used with permission

In his memoir A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking, Samuel Fuller wrote, "Heroes? No such damned thing! You moved your ass one way. And you didn't get hit. You moved it another way, you were blown to bits." That same thought must have crossed his mind on D-Day as he and "doggies" of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry disembarked the USS Henrico, down its port-side netting and into bobbing LCVPs.





D-Day wasn't his first action. He'd been with the same outfit since Tunisia, and if Kasserine Pass, or the battle for Troina in Sicily didn't kill him, odds were that "Dog Red" on Omaha Beach would. It's a miracle he wasn't one of the thousands of casualties that day.

"D-Day impacted my father for the rest of his life and was never the same after that," Fuller's daughter Samantha Fuller told us. "He would tell me and anyone else who was around how he survived that horrific experience. I was present during the production of The Big Red One. I actually saw him reliving his D-Day experience on the set of that film.




Ten months before D-Day, in Tunisia, the regimental commander Colonel Taylor, impressed by Fuller's Hollywood pedigree, enlisted the then Private as official regimental historian and arranged a transfer to 2nd Battalion Headquarters - much to the rifleman's dismay. Although ten years older than the average recruit, Fuller was compelled beyond reason to fight.

"He went to war in the mind of a journalist, a story teller, so his mission was to tell that story, said Fuller. "He even told the army recruiter before his induction, 'I have a helluva opportunity to cover the biggest crime story of the century and nothing is going to stop me from being an eyewitness.'"

For even a hardened veteran like Cpl Fuller, D-Day was a rendezvous with indescribable human tragedy. The Higgins boat ride to shore was a ghastly and dangerous affair, endorsed by intense German small arms fire from and artillery. The specter of floating bodies of dead DD tank crews greeted the landing craft 100 yards out into the channel (Fuller once wrote, "I saw a man's mouth - a mouth, for Chrissakes floating in the water.")

What happened to him next is best summed up by the citation for his Silver Star Medal:

Corporal Fuller landed with one of the initial assault waves France in the vicinity of Colleville-sur-Mer on 6 June 1944 and immediately began moving about the beach in an effort to aid the wounded and bring about some degree of control. Disregarding the intensity of the enemy fire, and the numerous mines and obstacles in the water, Corporal Fuller moved into the surf several times in order to drag wounded men to a point where they could be treated. When a breach was finally blown in the wire, the mission was given to Corporal Fuller of notifying the Regimental Commander of this. In order to reach the Regimental Commander, Corporal Fuller moved along one hundred yards of open beach, under constant heavy fire by the enemy. Not content with just having delivered the message, Corporal Fuller once more crossed the fire swept beach and notified the Regimental S-2 that the message had been delivered....Corporal Fuller was not wounded during this action.




"His war experience was only a few years of his life, but those years formed him for the remaining of his existence," said Fuller's daughter, a filmmaker herself and currently on the festival circuit with her documentary tribute to her late father, A Fuller Life: The Story of a True American Maverick.



"As a very small child I couldn't really understand his over-reacting to a loud surprising sound, like a door slamming or a dish crashing to the ground. I quickly learned to act softly around him, like setting the table without abruptly putting the dishes down or to make sure there wasn't a draft in the house that would make a door slam unexpectedly. On the other hand he didn't have a problem shooting a gun to call "action" at the beginning of a scene on a movie set. That's because he was in control of the situation. It was the element of surprise that disturbed him."

A Fuller Life: The Sam Fuller Documentary - Trailer from Samantha Fuller on Vimeo.

Dean Kessmann, A Layered History of Art: From Semitransparent to Opaque (detail), 2014, archival pigment print, 58" x 480" currently on view at FURTHERMORE LLC in Washington, D.C.

Each page was removed from the binding and scanned by projecting light through it, thus, each page is made to function like a photographic negative, or more accurately, a transparent positive. This engagement with photography corresponds to the recollection and writing of histories. Photography is often uncritically perceived as a medium that produces objective records, yet simultaneously, and perhaps more often, it is a means by which a photographer may produce utterly subjective imagery. Similarly, the written word traverses the continuum from fiction to non-fiction. -- Artist Dean Kessmann

Historians of art attempt to tell the story of our past by studying the cultural remnants left behind. It is usually impossible to recover a complete, irrefutable picture of what happened -- facts and stories lost with the passage of time are difficult to retrieve, requiring painstaking research in archives or slow, careful excavation. Even then, reconstruction happens in bits and pieces. To engage continuously in this endeavor requires something akin to faith. Currently on view at FURTHERMORE in Washington, DC, Dean Kessmann's site-specific installation A Layered History of Art: From Semitransparent to Opaque is a forty-foot long horizontal scroll digitally collaged with pages of that art bible, H.W. Janson's History of Art, and beautifully embodies the faith and hope involved in the imperfect search for truth.

Kessmann's A Layered History measures 58" x 480" and is installed in a monolithic arc that floats across nearly 900 square feet. Scanning each double-sided page literally illuminates them and provides the effect of cathedrals' stained glass windows, reminding me of the interior of Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut (also known as "Ronchamp") (1950-54). Without consciously referencing Le Corbusier's iconic modernist/proto-postmodern masterpiece specifically, Kessmann's monumental work contains many elements that nod to these traditions in Western art. As in Ronchamp, there is a play of tradition versus innovation/technology and representation versus abstraction. And as Ronchamp is a place of pilgrimage and religious faith, in A Layered History we see the culmination of faith shown by countless historians in studying thousands of artworks considered seminal in (Western) cultural history.


Dean Kessmann, A Layered History: From Semitransparent to Opaque (detail) at FURTHERMORE LLC



Making the work required a leap of faith by not only the artist, but also the exhibition curators/producers José Ruiz and James Huckenpahler at FURTHERMORE. Kessmann started the extremely time-consuming project not knowing what would result from scanning the pages in Janson's 1,000-page textbook and rebuilding them as one image in Photoshop. The artwork in the end became 5 feet tall and 40 feet long, and Huckenpahler and Ruiz of FURTHERMORE worked with Kessmann on the actual production of the archival pigment print, attempting to print the entire work as a continuous, single print. They stated: "Working with Dean was really exciting because we did not know if both the hardware and/or software could print such a large print. Most printshops wouldn't try something like this because of the costs that come up if it doesn't work. You have to start all over. Toss the paper and ink, which are expensive, and start again. We'll venture to say that no printshop in D.C. has attempted this either at work or at home."

In addition, FURTHERMORE worked with Kessmann to come up with a solution for installing and exhibiting the enormous work, and their goal was to find "something monumental that also felt tangible and not overly fabricated." FURTHERMORE's philosophy of fostering experimentation and collaboration resulted in resourcefully calling in Dan McCauley and Richard Vosseller of Sculptural Constructs, artists specializing in creative solutions to artistic, material and engineering problems. McCauley and Vosseller helped design and build a curved wall/mount which is not seen by the viewer but supports the print. FURTHERMORE described: "We gave them a budget, and their solution was to use similar techniques used in making skateboard ramps to make a perfect, seamless arc that was light enough to appear as though it was floating in the air. And then there was lift-off..."


James Huckenpahler views Dean Kessmann's A Layered History: From Semitransparent to Opaque installation at FURTHERMORE, the multi-platform arts space he and José Ruiz direct in Washington, DC



This work is the latest in Kessmann's exploration of re-examining ever-present phenomena and ephemera in our everyday lives. Trained in photography, Kessmann creates the effects of a zoom or multiple lenses and different types of lighting on these subjects, which range from the hidden folded corners of food packaging like cereal boxes to pages of the Bible. In these projects, Kessmann attempts to reveal what lies beyond the apparent to us, beneath the surface and between the lines. A Layered History's collaging of the double-sided pages of Janson's textbook suggest the presence of different perspectives (including perhaps some not presented) as well as the veils created by looking from any perspective. Indeed one of the impressions A Layered History gives is that Janson's History of Art in its totality (despite its authoritative title and its approximately 1,000 pages) still has some missing pieces to the "puzzle" of art history. As many comment, Janson and many art historians have neglected the cultural contributions of women, people of color and outliers.

At the same time, most American lovers of art cannot deny the influence of Janson on them. I, for one, as an undergraduate at a college famous at one time for that "Williams art mafia," it was nearly a rite of passage to enroll in ARTH101-102 and figure out how to carry home the gigantic tome along with other textbooks purchased at the college bookstore that day. In Kessmann's A Layered History, we can see traces and figments of the Giotto, Parthenon, Michaelangelo and Pollock that many of us first studied in school. As Kessmann states: "While the narrative presented in Janson's History of Art will always be imperfect and incomplete...it has introduced many students to the discipline in which I am a part. In fact, I read this textbook as an undergraduate student. While I cannot recall the exact moment, this book most likely, at least in part, contributed to my decision to become an artist. In this respect, it is a celebration of this text."

Check out more images and details in the slideshow. All images courtesy of the artist and FURTHERMORE LLC, unless otherwise noted. Dean Kessmann's A Layered History: From Semitransparent to Opaque is on view until June 14, 2014 (extended date) at FURTHERMORE (T: 202.330.1219; http://www.furthermorellc.com/contact.cfm) in Washington, DC.

Click here to watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post.

Liu Bolin's "Hiding in the City" series stems from his questioning of, and reflection on, the development of manmade civilization and its social problems. His work illustrates that amid the accelerating progress of society, our living environment has significantly improved, while humans are becoming increasing lost about the meaning and value of self -- sometimes even allowing the self to disintegrate. The artist's Chinese army training uniform and disappearance into the background are deliberate and metaphoric gestures of protest against this loss.

In terms of subjects, "Hiding in the City" covers sudden changes in our material environment; the drastic yet subtle change in human nature and spirit; people's decrying of the pollution of food, water, air or even "spirit" in recent decades; and an invisible sense of helplessness in society -- all of which are constantly transforming through time and space.

From its inception in 2005 to the present, the series has evolved alongside the rapid transformation of society, with both the cityscapes depicted in the work and the underlying concepts themselves shifting over time. The artist's continued contemplation and self-reflection have also made the series deeper and he continues to explore new possibilities with the work.

Liu's creative process can be divided into stages:

1. Selecting a shooting location - First, Liu considers the cultural characteristics and landmark architectures or sites of the city, and reflects on his personal experiences there.

2. Preparing the team - Once a location is selected, but.prior to the photo shoot,,Liu recruits fine arts students or artists to form a creative team and explains to them the creative process of the work.

3. Painting the artist - Liu dresses in a Chinese army training uniform and stands before the backdrop he's selected while the creative team paints his body and uniform to make him blend into the backdrop. The duration of painting depends on the complexity of the composition; it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

4. Photographing the artist - Once the painting process is complete, Liu is immersed in his surroundings, and the scene is photographed.

As you can see, "Hiding in the City" is a series born of different art forms including performance, painting and photography. Liu Bolin himself considers this series of works as "social sculpture," a term coined by artist Joseph Beuys, who described social sculpture as "how we shape the world in which we live."

By making himself invisible, Liu Bolin is shaping the world.

We want to know what you think. Join the discussion by posting a comment below or tweeting #TEDWeekends. Interested in blogging for a future edition of TED Weekends? Email us at tedweekends@huffingtonpost.com.

This post originally appeared on Bustle.

By Kat Haché



Recently indie band Arcade Fire released the music video for the song "We Exist." The video features Spider Man's Andrew Garfield as an individual struggling with gender identity. Garfield is shown putting on women's clothes before heading to a bar where his character is attacked -- then quasi-resurrected -- following a surreal dance scene in which, admittedly, the actor shines.

When I first saw the video, I had conflicted feelings. I thought that Garfield's portrayal of a trans woman paralleled some of my own experiences as a trans woman, and I found it relatable, perhaps even uncomfortably so. As his character stood and stared in the mirror, I was transported back to my bedroom when I was 20-years-old and struggling with my gender identity. I remembered the same frustrations as I tried to find my way to a reflection that wouldn't make me want to avert my eyes every time I saw a mirror.

Nevertheless, there were aspects of the video that bothered me, and as I began to see the reactions of other transgender women on Twitter and Facebook, I knew I was not alone.

First, the song itself is not about trans women -- it's about a son telling his father that he is gay. While coming out in this way is as common an experience for trans people as it is for lesbian, gay, bisexual individuals, there is a danger in conflating sexual orientation and gender identity -- especially in a video clearly intended to promote tolerance and understanding.

In our society, gender identity and expression are often muddled with sexual orientation. The suggestion that trans people are simply "extra gay" has been used to delegitimize transgender identities by suggesting that transgender people should just be comfortable with being gay, regardless of whether or not they ever self-identified as such.

In my case, I had to come out twice to my parents and friends (first as bisexual, then as transgender), and I don't see the two as necessarily related. For a time, I internalized ideas that transgender women should be attracted solely to men in order to be legitimate, which made me question my identity. But that only underscores why the conflation of gender identity and sexual orientation is so harmful.

The question of whether or not the character in the video is intended as a gay man or a transgender woman is an important one for other reasons, as well. For example, if the character in the video was intended to be a transgender woman, would it not stand to reason that an actual transgender woman should be chosen to portray her?

As exemplified by the choice of Jared Leto to portray a transgender woman in Dallas Buyers' Club, there seems to be a prevalent idea in Hollywood that viable transgender actors and actresses simply do not exist. They are rarely acknowledged as possible casting choices, even for transgender characters. It's easy to see how this idea could become a self-fulfilling prophecy: If casting directors don't think there are trans actors capable of playing the role of a trans character, they won't put out calls for said actors, and as a result, trans actors will remain less famous, if not invisible. This becomes particularly problematic when you're casting a video for a song entitled "We Exist." If so, where?



Even in stories centered on transgender narratives, transgender individuals are often passed over and drowned out by outsider voices incapable of articulating these narratives from the same perspective. The message this sends is that expressing our narratives on our terms is less important than affirming the (usually inaccurate) narratives that non-trans people have created about us. The end result, of course, is that we are never recognized for who we actually are.

As I watched Garfield's character endure violence at the hands of transphobic individuals only to emerge seemingly reborn before a rapt, cheering audience, I was reminded of the way Jared Leto received accolades and awards for his "courage" embodying a trans woman in his role in Dallas Buyers' Club. Yet the very real courage transgender people display every day is hardly ever recognized. If we are depicted in pop culture at all, it is often as tragic victims whose entire lives are reduced to an instance of hateful violence. Viewed through that lens, Andrew Garfield's performance can begin to feel a bit exploitative.

For trans people, our life is not a performance. We don't gain awards or recognition for being ourselves and enduring the struggles we face. And the attention that we get for saying that we exist is usually not positive. I have an entire blog dedicated to hateful things people have said about me for daring to be visible as a transgender advocate. I'm not going to dance that away, or wake up reborn in a world where I'm suddenly accepted by everyone around me. I have to fight every day to better not only my standing, but the standing of my entire community, to those who dehumanize us.

I do think that Andrew Garfield gave a good performance, and I appreciate Arcade Fire's effort. I think it's good for allies to acknowledge that trans people exist, and that we are people. But in the end, I can't shake my discomfort with this video.

It comes off hollow when our narratives are used as bait for awards and recognition, especially when it doesn't translate into more opportunities for transgender actors. It would be nice, for once, if actual transgender people were given a platform to actually say that we exist, on our own terms. It would be wonderful if our experiences were regarded as unique, and not seen as seen as interchangeable with that of cisgender gay men or drag queens. It would be refreshing if there was an acknowledgment that fixing the problems we face is going to take more than pride and proclaiming that we exist.

Because the people who hate us already know that we exist. As it stands, saying so only tends to make us a target. Instead, we need allies and society at large to acknowledge that transphobia exists, and that it kills. We need recognition of the fact that structural intolerance for variance in gender expression very much exists. And we need acknowledgment that sex and gender exist not as rigid binaries, but as spectrums of diversity.

We as trans people have the right not only to exist, but also to thrive and to be recognized as we are. And we deserve to articulate the breadth of our experience with our own voices.

CORRECTION: A previous version of the title of this post erroneously referred to the character Andrew Garfield portrays in Arcade Fire's "We Exist" video as a "trans dude." The error occurred when Bustle uploaded the post onto our blogging platform, but it has been corrected. We sincerely regret the oversight on our part.

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