Glenn Brown/Mixed Media

I’ve been thinking about the British artist, Glenn Brown, developing my thoughts about his work since I first saw Nigger of the World on display in Berlin during May, 2011.

Nigger of the World

2011
oil on panel
172 x 138 cm

The figure of a vulnerable woman

hides her head inside the same swirling

black and blue world that also plays

host to the lurking presence of hostile

male figures. It’s not necessary to know

the painting’s title was borrowed from song

lyrics by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

to understand the artist’s meaning. I told the

attendant at the Temporary Galerie Max Hetzler,

I could watch that painting all day long.

“That is what I have been doing,” he said.

 Another Glenn Brown painting,You Never Touch My Skin in the Way You Did and You’ve Even Changed the Way You Kiss Me, belongs to, but is not on display, at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Brown, “All of my work concerns itself with notions of reproduction and originality.”–Glenn Brown, 1995.

 

1994
oil on canvas
unframed 60 x 48.25 x 1.5 inches
Butler Family Fund, 1994
Copyright retained by the artist

 

 

 

 

 

 

This modern tendency for artists to explain their meaning by means of the written word  is one expressed purpose of the Norwegian artist, Odd Nerdrum’s revolt against modern art, embodied in his so-called Kitch Movement.

The meaning of Glenn Brown’s paintings here, and the entertainment value in the latter, are made accessible by his choice of titles. It’s collaboration. I’m all for it.

Monet’s Dining Room

Many years ago I saw photos of Monet’s Dining Room at Giverny in a decorating book at the library. That searing golden image lodged in my brain alongside theological and philosophical puzzles of the ilk that are difficult to express (Here I go again), let alone piece into order, like a Soduko or a jigsaw puzzle. How can a person think about food (let alone digest anything) inside that hot and glowing orb? Wouldn’t you sweat into your chair just from the color? Is it something like eating a meal saturated in those similarly colored fiery Indian spices?

Seven months ago I finally saw Monet’s brilliant dining room at Giverny. I wept as soon as I stepped inside that room, for a brief moment, all alone, and surprisingly emotional. Our house in Minnesota was For Sale at the time.

This week we are moving across town to a tired old house we have owned as a rental for what seems like a hundred years. In the proper order, we mostly painted rooms before we refinished the floors. After trying a large number of sample colors, we decided to paint the dining room the same color we already used at the house we are leaving. After the floors were stripped and refinished, we discovered we had painted golden yellow walls in a room with yellow pine floors. The room glows.

When one of the workers first saw the finished dining room he said, Wow! That room seems to radiate its own energy field. That was when I realized that I have, largely by accident (?), always been creating…

my own Monet’s Dining Room.

Revisiting the Past–What Words Can/Not

I spent a couple of days in my hometown last week. On Sunday after church, our friend, Ruth, produced a copy of a small black and white snapshot taken at one of the old church picnics. My mother was there in the center, her face dappled in sunlight. Infinitesimally tiny bits of ink left recognizable faces all across white computer paper. There were my people, and I knew almost all of them–from the shape of half a forehead peeking over the top of someone else, from a hairline, from the tilt of someone’s head, or even from the ever so familiar chin of my father.  In Ruth’s copy of the photo, everyone standing in the back row had been chopped off somewhere between the chest and the chin, depending on height.

“What’s that on my dad’s shoulder?” I asked, pointing at a white space beside him.

Ruth didn’t know.  She said she’d lost the snapshot after she made the prints. I think I screamed when I found the original (still in the copier) and recognized myself, a toddler safely surveying the world from atop my dad’s right shoulder. My very first following thought? What Words Can/Not.

The St. Olaf Senior Dance majors really captured my attention last December with their thought provoking concert title, one they proceeded to interpret, each in her own way. If I were a choreographer, what movements would I choose in order to express the strength and surprise I felt at seeing myself there, safely surrounded by the people (mostly now deceased) who once loved me so firmly and well? If I were a painter, what shapes would I choose? What colors? As a sculptor, what material–marble, bronze, dust? As the writer–What Words Cannot.

Hopes and Dreams

I attended a very useful session at the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Seattle this week. Beyond the Memoir: a New Approach to Teaching Creative Writing to Senior Citizens. (David Robson,  Nancy McCurry,  Paul Pat,  Lloyd Noonan). Panel members, all of whom teach creative writing to senior citizens, presented materials and ideas to help others of us create interesting and imaginative activities and assignments to use for teaching in senior programs.

During the question and answer session, a young woman asked the panel if and how, in their classes, they helped students address the inevitable loss of their hopes and dreams. None of the teachers acknowledged that question as part of their curriculum. But, one of the attendees raised his hand and said that in one of his poetry workshops a student wrote about a failed marriage by describing her former husband beating his flat tire with a tire iron. He said the student was laughing so hard at her story that the rest of the class started writing about horrible relationships in their pasts as well. The poetry instructor said he thought older people, if they do acknowledge the loss of dreams, often try to find humor in it.

The woman who asked the question appeared to be about thirty years younger than many of the rest of us in the room. From the murmurings I heard after the session, most of of the people attending the session knew what I understood in my stomach when she asked the question.

Since my husband and I had our family a little later than many couples, I thought that when our children were grown and out of the house I would be finished with my productive life, and fade on into Sun City or some other similar place full of bright light and leisure. But, when that particular time arrived, I realized I wasn’t finished at all. For one thing, I went for my Master of Fine Arts Degree, anticipating a successful writing career, punctuated by publications that have not materialized. Well, at least not yet.