Ehren E Clark

The Aaronic Priesthood and What it Means to Become an Elder

2011-12-18T05:37:00.001-08:00

Twenty six years ago, as a young boy of eleven, my good friend Mark Jesperson, almost a year older than I, turned 12 and was conferred with the Arronic Priesthood and ordained to the office of Deacon. I recall the first Sunday that I watched Mark Jesperson pass the sacrament and it seemed like it would be a very long year before I would be able to join his rank and enjoy that privilege. As one by one my friends turned 16 and were ordained to the office of priest I watched anxiously and with envy as they blessed the sacrament and there was nothing I wanted more than to be up on the altar to bless the sacrament with them. I had much to learn about the spirit of the Aaronic Priesthood beyond the apparent duties. Many of us have much to learn about the spirit of the Aaronic Priesthood and my shortsightedness might be one reason that it is not until now, twenty five years after my Aaronic priesthood confirmation that I have the joy of being conferred today with the Melchizedek Priesthood and ordained to the office of Elder and will not make the same mistake I made twenty five years ago. What is the Aaronic Priesthood and what does it mean to become an Elder?

Doctrine and Covenants 20:38-67 contains a lengthy list of Aaronic and some Melchizedek Priesthood responsibilities that had I known the extent of I might not have been so eager when I was eleven and longing to be twelve to be conferred the Aaronic Priesthood. The responsibilities of the Aaronic priesthood can be found in verses 46-59. This is a profound task for easily distracted youth and any young man who is fully functional in these duties will be immeasurably blessed and receive tremendous happiness and will be well on his way to becoming a fully functioning Melchizedek Priesthood holder and will have untold reservoirs of strength as he is called to be a missionary.

Further, these duties, if performed by the Aaronic Priesthood holder in the proper spirit, prayerfully and reverently and taken in the spirit of service to his fellow man, his fellow quorum members and honoring the covenants he has made to the lord and not with vain repetition but with a full heart and a contrite spirit, will literally imbue a rare power in this individual, a sacred spiritual power that will enable him to be a more effective servant of the lord in all that he does and will achieve a unity in his temporal and spiritual life and be a missionary even before he is called to serve. This is the potential of living fully the Aaronic Priesthood. This is the great benefit of not merely performing the duties but also living the spirit of the Aaronic Priesthood. This young man will be immeasurably blessed and bless the lives of those around him and he will be well on his path to exaltation.

A wonderful and seminal General Conference address by Elder Bruce R. McConkie, October, 1974 entitled “Only an Elder” is a powerful treatise on the sacred and profound nature of the office of Elder, obtained by the conferring of the Melchizedek Priesthood with duties too vast to be listed in section 20 of the Doctrine and Covanents. Elder McConkie asks “Brethren, what think ye of the office of an elder? Someone else asks: “What office do you hold in the Church? What is your priesthood position?” An answer comes: “Oh, I’m only an elder.” Only an elder! Only the title by which a member of the Council of the Twelve is proud to be addressed; only the title which honors the President of the Church, who is designated by revelation as the first elder, only the office to which millions of persons are ordained in the vicarious ordinances of the holy temples.” D&C 20, 1-5 Each member of the Church who is called to the office of Elder holds the same priesthood power and responsibly as prophets, seers, and revelators! This is an awesome power, an awesome responsibility and for many of us this is humbling and baffling, but for those who fulfill the duties of an Elder with the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood there will be great joy in this life and the life to come.

Elder McConkie alludes to the profundity of the power as well as the spirit of the Melchizedek Priesthood in his address as he states: “Only an elder! Only a person ordained to preach the gospel, build up the kingdom, and perfect the Saints; only a minister whose every word is scripture; only the holder of that office which carries the privilege of receiving the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, of having the heavens opened, and of communing with the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn, and of enjoying the communion and presence of God the father and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. Further he says: What is an elder? An elder is a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. He holds the holy Melchizedek Priesthood. He is commissioned to stand in the place and stead of his Master—who is the Chief Elder—in ministering to his fellowmen. He is the Lord’s agent. His appointment is to preach the gospel and perfect the Saints.” What an awesome calling, what better way to serve in life?

D&C 121: 36, 40-46 This is truly the Spirit of the Priesthood that comes from fulfilling priesthood responsibilities sincerely, meaningfully, humbly and prayerfully through everyday service such as fulfilling stewardship and familial duties, making wise and difficult choices, fulfilling leadership obligations, magnifying your callings, missionary responsibilities in all aspects of life, being true in thought, word and deed, fellowshipping and lending time and energy and resources to those in need and strengthening your testimony everyday through prayer and study; this will directly benefit you and those you love.

Fulfilling one’s responsibility as an Elder and living the profound spirit of the Melchizedek Priesthood fundamentally means remaining true to the oath and covalent made willfully when conferred with the Melchizedek Priesthood, an oath and covalent that I make willfully and knowingly today. This is a covenant one makes with the lord that is the source of infinite joy yet for those who break this covenant, turn away and abuse their priesthood power there are consequences. The oath and covenant of the priesthood is clearly stated in Doctrine and Covenants 84:33-41.
If this might seem daunting, overwhelming or intimidating and at times you might feel inadequate, there is a standard which each of us might follow to clearly show us how to progress more fully and earnestly in the priesthood. This standard is the simple yet sublime example of our savior Jesus Christ who lived a life of purity and perfection as he exercised his Priesthood power through everyday acts of kindness and love. We might learn from the life of Christ who so perfectly exemplified the actions and profundity of the priesthood power by simply serving his fellow man with humility. Through Christ we can gain strength through his sublime example and also feel comfort and support.

Yet we, unlike Christ are not perfect. Doctrine and Covenants 84: 43-47. As imperfect beings we are simply incapable of living a live according to “every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God” without repentance made possible by the ultimate act of service rendered with divine priesthood authority from God and by Jesus Christ through the atonement, an act of service rendered to every man, woman and child who has lived or who will ever live. Without this sublime act I would not be making my covenant today, and many of us would be incapable of keeping it. Yet the atonement not only shows us the incredible power of the priesthood but it allows us the miracle of forgiveness through Christ’s sacrifice that we might honor our oath and covenant. Once conferred the Melchizedek Priesthood and ordained an Elder by my father today, I will earnestly and humbly perform my priesthood duties as an Elder with the prayerful spirit of service and honor my oath and covenant, this made possible by utilizing the very real power of the atonement in my life.

2011-02-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

The Poetry of Art

What is a poem? The use of words to covey meaning through abstract composition that allows the arbitrariness of content to flow freeing the word from conventional context through creative construction to convey a language of thought transcending the confines of linguistics. What is visual poetry? It is art that uses the visual to convey meaning through abstract composition that allows the arbitrariness of content to flow freeing the image from conventional context through creative construction to convey an aesthetic of thought transcending the confines of logical aesthetics. Such is the visual poetry of artists Susan Beck, Bonnie Sucec and Ryan K. Peterson to be shown beginning March 11th at the Finch Lane Gallery.

“Our route thus compass’d we, a segment widely stretch’d
Between the dry embankment, and the core
Of the loath’d pool, turning meanwhile our eyes
Downward on those who gulp’d its muddy lees…” Canto VII, 129-133
Those “who gulp’d its muddy lees” is a hell divined by Dante in the “Divine Comedy” to which those who transgressed the sin of anger are condemned made lucid to the reader. Artist Susan Beck’s composition “Distance Looks Our Way” might be said to be painted as Dante wrote, with an air of gravity and sublimity that can be greater appreciated with a poetic sensitivity. In this expressive lyrical ambiance we feel the universal awe of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and simultaneously recognize the anxiety of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” These seemingly contradictory states of being find themselves well placed in this visual poem drawing the mind and the eye from one direction to the next grappling for reason. But there is none. The eye might think it “gets it” but the mind realizes that it doesn’t and gives in to the irrationality. Here is a subject sublimated to substance as the visual is appreciated poetically.
As the chorus of angels wrestle Mephistopheles to redeem Faust at last they beckon:
On to the light,
Loving flames, stream,
May truth redeem
Self-damned from blight,
That, gladly weaned
From evil and cleaned,
In the All-Unity
Blessed they be.” 11801-11808
The idea that the spirit can be rescued even from the most damning reality, even that of Faust in Goethe’s masterpiece, is a theme common to poetry and art and Beck reflects on such themes in her emotive visual poem “Let Go, Damn It.” Once more we find more substance than subject with a Goya-like darkness contrasted with the universal messages of salvation in many paintings of William Blake. The message is fundamentally optimistic, one of humanism and the capability of humankind. Here is adversity but ultimately one finds him or herself believing in the faceless but not helpless creature who clings to a thread of hope, her only salvation. Beck is consistent with imagery that cannot be read with logic but is allowed to manifest through sensory intuition: a poetic sensibility.
The visual poetry of Bonnie Sucec each, she said, “develops on its own- starting with a fragment- the painting unwinds with twists and turns and seldom a solution.” These visual poems are lush and alive and enrich the viewer who may explore the pastiche of style and motif with a “joie de vivre” temperament. Sucec’s “The Sun and the Moon” is itself a poem as lyrical as a sonnet.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath too short a date.” XVIII, 1-4
Sucec’s liberated aesthetic is delightful and compels sensations such as in this sonnet by William Shakespeare. This work can be interpreted visually with the sense of mystery of Marc Chagall with his same enjoyable color cacophonies which enhance the whimsical iconography. These prints have many tales to tell that can be enjoyed by releasing sensory perception and not penetrative scrutinizing.
In the capricious poem “A Tout Épreuve” by Surrealist poet Paul Elouard, translated loosely as “Through all of the Trials,” he writes “A la suite des images, Le masse de la lumiére roule vers d’autre rêves” or “After the visual experience, the body of light follows on to other dreams.” The Surrealists made ample use of the irrational and the sense of displacement found in Elouard’s poem to expound on greater depths of consciousness. In like manner Sucec’s “Venus in a Half Shell” incites the imagination to meander through the inviting imagery such as one would the oeuvre of Surrealist painter Max Ernst whose similar “narratives” lack a beginning, have no middle and will reach no end. Only the sensual experience of this visual poem can give it its raison de être. These visual poems encourage meaning by avoiding rational interpretation and submitting to depths of the conscious.
Ryan K. Peterson’s works might be described as “grotesque”… “I believe in a collective consciousness so I would like to think others might relate to seeing childhood monsters, stalking predators, metaphorical giants and the curious, not-so-subjective reality behind our eyes,” he said. His visual poetry invites thoughts of horror in the face of the uncanny as what we see might seem tied to somewhere in the psyche that we find uncomfortable. “It’s Looking for Me” is a visual poem that might resonate with the subject of memory and temporality, but nervously so. These memories may seem in retrospect not fond and the viewer must, as must all, reconcile their peace with their own as Peterson may be doing.
“So I loved a dream?
My doubt, a mass of ancient night, concludes
In many a subtle branch, which, since the real woods
Remain, proves, alas, what I offered to myself
As triumph was the ideal lack of roses.
Let’s think it over…” Stéphane Mallarmé
Ultimately we cannot escape our own reality.
Peterson’s most uncomfortable visual poems are his sculptures “Brother’s Bighead” which, he said, “are dreams, phobias and personal imagery manifested in sculpture.” “White Big Head” is sculpted poetry that is ironic and ugly and makes no sense outside of a poetic engagement with it.
“Stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lust
Torment our bodies and possess our minds,
And we sustain our affable remorse
The way a beggar nourishes his lice,”
Realist poet Charles Baudelaire here offers warning to the reader who begins to explore the daunting channels of thought to be found in his collection “Les Fleures du Mal.” Baudelaire was a poet of realism at odds with Parisian Modernity. His poems are not dark fantasies but truth of reality as he saw it. “White Big Head” is absurd like the work of sculptor Louise Bourgeois and in this absurdity can be found reality, traces of the real confronting us and our own reality with the crafty gaze of “White Big Head.” This is the same gaze that met the men of Paris who entered the Salon of 1865 to Eduard Manet’s painted courtesan, “Olympia,” making them embarrassingly self-conscious of their own debauchery.
Art considered historically has most frequently required a literal interpretation and has had specific aims and purposes. However there is a wealth of art, such as that of Beck, Sucec and Peterson, that will lose the recognition of its intrinsic value and the meaningful experience offered to the viewer when attempted to be understood with any degree of the absolute. Beck’s visual poems transcend being, Sucec’s explores consciousness while Peterson’s challenges reality in ways that transcend, explore, and challenge standardized notions of aesthetics.
“Another hardened expanse, once marked with occasional cairns
Spreads out ahead--mountainless.
The minutia of divots and pimples’
Of furrows and flakes, lead the way,” writes featured artist Susan Beck.

2010-04-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

Condemned to be Free

Like the character played by Liv Ullmann in Igmar Bergman’s 1966 classic film Persona, one perceives in her character a desire to escape from the world when the one thing longed to be escaped is the self. Such is instigated by the fear of exposure for heinous crimes which one cannot categorically identify, at times the desire to envelop one’s self in a shroud, a hiding place created by a state of irrational unease through a self consciousness making one wish that the inescapable was avoidable. With every thought the anguish of paranoia may release the sensitive self to lower depths according to one’s own self repulsion. And in these times, when one feels acute anxiety and inner anxiety of fear, fearing to fall farther, are these depths not only compounded and made more insufferable by an acute sense of insurmountable isolation?
Like the self fabricated cocoon which Ullmann’s entire performance is constructed upon, her fictive and defensive being, woven through time and self-conflict, so carefully articulated that this Persona has judged, by her own anxiety, herself as guilty. Ullman’s character is hopeless to hope for the impossible: to speak and not be heard, to move and not be seen, to cry and be understood, to think and not betray the self so fearful to one’s own inner being. Ullmann’s character in the film exists in a self implemented silence and reclusiveness.
However resolutely, this existential state is universal, by varying degrees, one whose rules all must abide by: that of the human intercourse. In the extreme, like Ullmann’s character, one might be bound in a state of desperation, of self-loathing, of self-prescribed solitude however unjustified, with an irrational fear of exposure to the world.
One may leave neither house nor home- nowhere is one immune to the existential predicament. The terror of guilt, the feeling of being caught in a situation although innocent of any categorical fault, one finds one’s moments charged with thoughts of unquenchable damnation, a predestined hell; the fear to betray oneself through gesture, word and being, only to wish to breath, to encounter the earth one so longs to inhabit and propagate, a life so longed to be lived. All are prisoners, captive in a web of existential self consciousness.
One might try and do what one will but one cannot shed the shell, the body, the I who longs to be but cannot, the I who can share a harmonious existence with those that the I loves, adores but cannot build a bridge to. The I fears, the I loves but cannot fulfill that potential without fear of exposure, existing in a state of frenzied anxiety, in the Heideggerian notion of angst; this most “primordial fear,” this “turning away and falling prey…making fear possible.” This is a turning away from the self finding this self fearful. From what is it that the persona is afraid of? Resolutely it is not solely the subjective self and not solely the Heideggerian “they” that frightens one. It is the nature of ones conscious self confronted with the “other” that is the foundation of anxiety.
Ullmann portrays bold personality traits and is not someone one might suspect of falling prey, of succumbing to a self-inflicted torture. But none, even the most strongly willed, such as Ullman, in angst, avoids the impulse to discover an exile where she seeks the authentic self through self realization- the ultimate goal, in a tender scenario of finding the true self one believes to exist yet cannot find. Ullman’s contrived exile from the world, the universe she has created from silence, avoids everyday life that all must participate in, in order to exist phenomenologically. She neither speaks nor interacts with others other than the interlocutor whom in the film is the mouthpiece of the taciturn Ullman- she has, for herself created her own chamber of horrors- self inflicted in the conflict of phenomenological being.
According to Hideggerian theory of an unknown “they,” that which is beyond the “self,” who is Ullmann’s they, the cause of her angst? She is hiding herself from the possibility of being perceived by beings encountered in the surrounding world, an unshakable paradox. Apparently she is experiencing the angst of what is “the perception of what is objectively present tak[ing] place,” states Heidegger. The objectivity at hand is a very equivocal one for the “self,” and there is no absolute. One might register in Ullman’s character a hateful, irrational and misanthropic persona, one which has earned her exile. Yet her irrational being is a merely a phantom of her true self in a state of conflict. This is none other than, according to Heidegger a self “in search for one of the most far-reaching and most primordial possibilities of disclosure which lie in Da-sein;” the self in its state of being.
Much conflict within the existential self and the experience which is inescapable, of “being,” of Da-sein, resides with the indeterminate angst of which is the everyday, a common and universal reality. A categorical system, to model the self amongst the “they” is not possible, there are no set parameters of the phenomenological. One discovers or finds the self within the panorama of the “they”, through being, often creating the phenomenon of anxiety due to the overwhelming phenomenological possibilities- intercourse with the “they”.
Persona concludes with no existential definite besides that of “care”, the action of being; Heidegger and the state of phenomenology, identifiable yet indeterminate in an equivocal structure resulting in the chaos of angst.
According to the philosophy that Sartre pioneered, existential beings are slaves to one’s own self consciousness. In Heideggerian theory of consciousness one is a slave to one’s own self awareness as guilt, and driven by it. Guilty or not, human consciousness, according to Sartre was an awareness of a transcendental self, an object distant to the “other,” beholden to the same anxiety as Liv Ullman’s character. She battled, with no foundation or true a priori conceptions in the Kantian sense- an angst ridden, anxious, self conscious perceived by her fear of the “other.”
To elucidate this conjecture, one might begin with an explanation by Heidegger on what exactly is Da-sein and the “they” or Sartre’s “other.” For Heidegger, Da-sein, is his primary state of “being” or departure into the realms of the phenomenological signified as “being-there,” or being “objectively present.” His “they” resounded with Sartre’s “other” as “being with the world” contingent with “being a self.” What Bergman alluded to through Ullman’s “persona” was the state of anxiety of experience, the state of the self in conflict with the “other.” Yet this reflective consciousness is a mere state of human existence, according to Sartre, which no adroit being can avoid, and no “null ground of a nullity,” according to Heidegger, can appease.
Angst forms an integral aspect of Heidegger’s Being and Time, a trajectory based upon “the fundamental attunement of angst as an eminent disclosedness of Da-sein;” an attunement of the “self” and the dynamic in the face of the “other.” This dynamic leads to the fundamental quality definitive of all action: “care.” According to Heidegger, the phenomenon of “care” is pervasive in its universality as an extension of the “self” to the “they,” and its motivating source is the core of human experience.
This core of human experience may be made cogent aesthetically by a comparison to the multi-faceted sculpture of Alberto Giacometti, whose relationship to Jean-Paul Sartre is highly reputed. Giacometti’s homogenous figures all bear a similar aesthetic and signification, not merely Minimalist modernity but existentialist philosophy; its fundamental form relative to existentialism is profound, also seen in his painting and drawing.
Giacometti’s figures are delicate, are not merely a study of form but a study of humanity whose being is what is present yet whose essence is malleable. These waif-like, apparently brittle sculptures are solid brass, with an unbreakable core whose exterior or “persona” is rendered loosely, absent. They personify this ideology in their figural construction and epistemology.
According to the all seeing eye of Sartre, the anxiety or self consciousness is the human predicament. In the prodigious oeuvre of Giacometti, figures of all sizes, like the diversity of the body, delicately poised in an existential conflict of mind, body and soul-spirit, the Da-sein in the face of the existential experience. This dynamic might be viewed as a condition which all “being” souls, through an infinite intercourse of relationships- through the mind’s eye and through the intuitive eye plays out the human condition. Like the durable yet delicate sculptures by the artist, the result is beautifully and eloquently phrased in bronze. While the essence follows existence, the external is indeterminate leaving the core which these sculptures signify, standing erect in an infinite strength.
Rothko plays out the existential model in his abstract expressionist canvases. As Sartre professes, the conscious is a consciousness of itself as it is a transcendental state of awareness. The experience of witnessing a Rothko, the metaphysics of the personal relationship which each viewer finds between the self and the canvas may be likened to a great reflecting pool. The metaphysical quality in his work allows the act of looking to be returned. This is a spiritual synthesis, an exploration of the inner self, a phenomenon not caused by insecurity or fear, anxiety or angst, but a channel to the soul opened by meditation on Rothko’s work and one is free to explore and revisit the essence of the self which many are blinded to.
Camus’ metaphor of the Myth of Sisyphus extemporaneously discloses, like a twentieth century Erasmus, the folly of humanity and symbolizes the inauthentic, ironical “absurd” of the human predicament. To many, inauthentic being cannot be avoided, the reverse to Ullman’s tragic authentic being. Too often the case with the inauthentic being of the “they” is an anticipated fear of self conscious recognition and possibility of conflict with the “self.”. As the rock of Sisyphus will never find its resting place, so does denying reality leave one in a state of unrest, of anxiety and the “absurd” of the “they.”
Camus draws a striking connection with Dostoevsy whereby the “absurd” might be assuaged. In Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, particularly the Brothers Karamazov, a light from the darkness and “absurdity” that envelops the world Dostoevsky creates, so pervasive, is actually attainable. As Camus’ own theory of ideology and fatality is introduced in his metaphor of the absurd in the Myth of Sisyphus, he also sees redemption and a justification in Dostoevsky’s protagonists. Camus presents a vantage point whereby authenticity might transgress the absurd, might see beyond the fates and delve into the “hero’s” consciousness. Such is the case in Dostoevsky’s psychological journeys, a subjective perspective which leads the reader haphazardly through the realms of dementia yet one may find it poetic, even sublime.
The Myth of Sisyphus is a tragic humanist metaphor of the absurd, however in the work of Dostoevsky and the frantic, unpredictable and devastating events which encompass the lives of those who exist in large measure “on the fringe,” here the absurd often manifests itself as authentic as ultimately, the hero is redeemed, such as in the final two pages of Crime and Punishment, as Raskolnikov dedicates his soul to God.
What is the authentic being of a Dostoevskian character who often finds reconciliation? There is an exceptional quality in the author to portray a complex and multi-dimensional nature. In the majority of the literature, angst is fundamental to the tone in the existential conflict in a mesh of being. The protagonist and the antagonist are often uncannily similar and the author unravels their intertwined natures throughout the novel revealing the authenticity in the struggle of both.
Like Bergman, Dostoyevsky’s work is highly psychological and probes the vicissitudes of existentialism through the maze which is a mis-en-scene for the analytical approach to decipher the character’s nature which one finds progressively revealed as one follows them through the Dostoevskian labyrinth. This ensemble of human relations, even to the most threadbare, like a Giacometti, results in the existential battle of myth and reality.
Thus, how does the innocent discover his or herself while experiencing a state of irrational fear and self imposed exile- to hide from the phenomenon of the “they” without a verifiable state of guilt” such as Dostoevsky’s Alyosha. Kant might answer with his theory of the transcendental nature of mind over matter. In pursuit of reason, one must rely on one’s own a priori conceptions of the mind. Yet without logical and empirical grounds for thought, reason becomes unfounded.
Experience is frequently based on the transcendental thought with no objective base. Thus the mind is an organ allowing complete liberty to comprehend, however too often, as Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason suggests. The rational takes flight, such as the metaphysics which Kant aimed to limit in his Critique through reason. Too often these flights of the mind may lead from the rational to the irrational through false logic. Generally speaking, two predicates conceptualized by analysis can take the mind far from reality.
In a mind in the state of angst, like the Greeks, seek reason to combat the unknown, ignorance, fear, the unanswerable. The existential is, from the extreme of Ullman’s character to another extreme, harmonious encounters with nature, part of humanity and can also be seen. In all possibility of inter-connections, a fascinating aspect to being, is free if one is only to reconcile, like Dostoevsky’s Raskolnicov, and embrace the human intercourse- relating, and find one’s self, as Heidegger states- “at home.”.
Such dynamics, a range of existential phenomenon, are profoundly addressed by the reaction which has been the toil of artists, writers and poets, philosophers having to confront a society with wars, revolutions, inter-relational disputes, famine, poverty and demographic reconstruction and the phenomenon of angst and anxiety. Goya lived in a veritable mental prison, not only fighting psychosis but instantaneous loss of hearing. His mind was his prison, as his latter works may allude to.
In painting, one sees the terror in the eyes of many of Gericault’s mid- nineteenth century portraits; humanizing and sensitive representations of the mentally ill. Baudelaire casts an eerie shadow through his vivid depictions of the depths of the heart of Parisian life in the mid nineteenth century, and Giacometti portrays the anxiety of the 1960’s and demand for a more egalitarian society. These are only three examples from different epochs which demonstrate the pervasive state of angst and there is no apparent end to such metaphors.
Analytically, there is no quantifier to predict the effect the human environment will have on an individual, all are equally susceptible to existential phenomenon. Like the perfect relationship, the marriage, the subject of Bergman’s 1973 Scenes from a Marriage, one might not foresee the elements that premeditated the sudden rupture of this seemingly harmonious relationship. There may be no grounds for the character played by Erland Josephson and his sudden, apparently irrational departure from a blissful relationship and Liv Ullman’s reaction to an “absurd” situation. Yet one finds in Bergman’s second installment, Saraband, with thirty years of separation, an equally volatile relationship in the two. Love is irreconcilable between these irascible pair and the film concludes with Josephson’s final panic.
Phenomenology is succinct with the many factors one might find from without, in the “they,” or the “other,” in conflict with the self. It is an abstract discipline, theorized by Heidegger and many others including Sartre and is as relevant contemporaneously as it was valid for Plato. It was and will always be a universal reality.
A universal state of art, a performatist utopia is becoming more and more a contemporary condition. It is an integral aspect to post-historical art. A unique individual perception results when all viewers have a personal experience, resulting potentially in an alleviation of anxiety in a utopia of open dialogue which one might not find in art which is didactic or condemning. Such art only increases the phenomenon of angst. This is the case with Bill Viola’s video installations. Each viewer enters and leaves engaged in a potentially open discourse. The art, personal to each observer begs more questions than answers and invites intense contemplation.
Giacometti’s sculpture is universal, as is existentialism to a utopian ideology accessible in its relativism to all who participate in the human discourse. Giacometti’s beings exist in a mutual, homogenous existence while retaining the self, the core amidst the “they”. Only through self-recognition can the true authentic being be realized- can begin. By Sartre’s definition of existentialism true recognition must exist with a reflective consciousness. One must discover this essence in accord with the “other” or one is lost.
Ullman’s character was not without an almost perceptive intuitive voice; even she cannot fully mask her “persona.” However, for those without self imposed silence, for those who bear with their own proactive actions, the quality of “care,” Ullman’s hiding from the existentiality of the human phenomenon seems cowardly, one might find reason to condemn Ullman’s predicament and the phenomenon. But, tragically, like Sisyphus, this is what she has been dealt- her lot in life. However, as with freedom of choice, with agency, many bear the existential not as a burden but see beauty in it, the positive side of the human intercourse. A beauty such as this fills the many pages of Proust.
True to his own history, told by an elderly Marcel Proust, the invalid, exiled not by a choice but by necessity, evokes nothing more than impressions of his life upon his readers. The existentiality of Proust is rendered beautifully, lovingly, thoughtfully in a transplant of his gift to humankind- translated Time Regained, or In Search of Lost Time.
The episodes which constitute the six volumes are a fragmented narrative and are temporally interwoven. The weighty material of phenomenology and existentialism might be lightened here, where the weight of Berman’s characters in their angst is far heavier.
The existential questions of who, what, where, when, why and how might simply be answered in this study of human experience. It is apparent that with Proust, no slight is given to a thoughtful gesture, a touch, a smell, a memory, a moment which might be otherwise left ignored. In the processes of that which is human, Proust leaves no stone unturned, no idiosyncrasy for the mind, no confusion- Proust meanders his way adroitly and lucidly through his own experience, seemingly distanced from the reader’s yet with an air of freedom of expression and ease.
His Modern narration delves into those human “intangibles” which Proust presents lividly. It is Proust, from his early days in Combray, his experiences at Balbec, his travel to Venice and his final years in Paris who may reveal to the reader, not through rhetoric, but through biographical experience, an authentic alternative and fruitful “being.”
As an exemplar to the antithesis of the absurd, what is before the readers’ eyes is a very honest, truthful writer whom one comes to know. One might certainly find a unique quality to Proust’s existentialism. It might be safe to say that Proust had a love affair with life. His entire approach within the six volumes delves into a humanitarian study, first hand, of life at the fin de siècle, at the very pinnacle of cultural, political, sociological, demographic and economical states of being in Paris during those golden years.
The upheaval of Paris in the years just prior to Proust’s youth might be perceived as a universal, acute phenomenological reflective consciousness of the masses. A pervasive anxiety galvanized the inhabitants of Paris towards revolution, yet this galvanizing resulted in these golden years of Parisian history, the Fin de siècle and in no aspect of the writing of Proust does the reader confront the intensity of nineteenth century Parisian history which is ample in the works

Why I am like a Braque painting

2010-02-12T00:30:00.000-08:00

Why I am like a Braque Painting

I like Braque. He was the analytical Cubist and continued to be so well into the synthetic phase and farther on when others allowed Cubism to delve into realms of Surrealism, including Picasso, whose shapes became a spectacle of fanciful forms and traces of what Cubism had been, now painted merely as Modernist icons with no real Modernist significance. Braque continues to pay attention to the dynamics of a composition well after others had made a farce of Cubism. He paid attention to special relationships and volume of the form within those relationships, as a room for example, where, and this is well into the 20’s, he still focused on the perspective of the viewer on this very blatantly artificial setting, this art setting that is a stage to challenge norms of special dynamics from the analytical eye of the viewer, witnessing the piece, not for any sort of representation but to examine these formulas and the malleability of the literal, or the absence of the literal, or absolute.
But back in the second decade of the cacophonous twentieth century, we see these elements manifest early in Braque’s early work, like the early Picasso, placing in that very two dimensional range of artifice, all that is deep, made up in short, of bodily planes, angles and perspectives of every sort, locked into this two-dimensional artificial reality, the reality that was almost a proof that art by its very two-dimensional, painterly nature could indeed house fathoms, multitude of depth and perspectival recessions and contradictions in the mode which is art, free, honest, true to its very nature as an artificial avatar yet able to contain the vicissitudes of a guitar player or a café table with all of the dimension that one might find in a piece by Velasquez or Manet.
Why I am like Braque painting is due to the artifice of the world and my own placement in it. That shallow plane is the reality of society, the expectations, limitations, demands and ironies that potentially “frame” an individual in this artifice. I defy that. Although I must obey the rules, I have no choice in this matter, I am slave to the artifice of the world; but I am no slave to myself and I am able to transcend this shallow plane by playing by the rules, but defying them through authenticity. The more I play this game, trapped in this artifice, the more my own authenticity becomes manifest. The more I concede the more my primal nature takes shape in this contradiction of acceptance of the artifice but establishing my own character, true to my authentic human being who sees and thinks in more than two dimentions, takes shape and my abstracted form, is able to breath and cultivate itself in this two dimensional space.
The age of the history painting is past and we subsist in a shallow existence- depth is an illusion and we cannot deny societal confines. Anyone who denies this is denying themselves. But I allow myself the freedom to express my multi-dimensionality in a way that Braque would, placing temperament against intellect, desire against fantasy till my character is so abstracted that it bears the sense of three dimensionality.

2009-04-16T23:42:00.001-07:00

LICENCE TO BE MADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

The words I listen to on the HiFi express how I feel, which is a cavern of stalagmites and stalactites, a cavern which is continued on and on, the words I hear echo through the walls but only penetrate to a certain depth. The pain I feel penetrates farther. The pain I feel penetrates deeper and resonates and reverberates, causing a cacophony of waves which fluctuate in all directions. But this madness is not something lost. I have a control on my certitude, but how or much I do and do not have power over. My control is of a minimal extent. And with that life proceeds at a tolerable, pleasurable, manageable certitude. But there is another rate and that is a life with an acceptance of madness.
This life, be not swayed, is not one predetermined, but one meandered upon by choices of habit and desire, of love and lust. This life given to madness, is not given to with full fruition of insanity, but is freckled with tangible productivity, one not initially chosen but which is accepted to, with a greater degree, and with nothing sacrificed.
Having the means, a life that is to be lived with pleasure, must be lived with essence intermingled with leisure. Such a life, if attainable, can be durable with such pleasure, while a certain degree of madness is accepted and ALLOWED! Such seeking can be found by degrees of madness which are the ends of the productivity. Without such productivity, misery and loss are a result, but with a definite degree of productivity, one might, if chosen, find themselves in that certain state of madness which is the chosen pinafore of the productive state.
This certain intoxification is indeterminate, however, for the present, the writer chooses either nullity or intoxification to occupy himself with while all else is void. The degree of pleasure enabled by the present occupied state is entirely satisfactory, yet this state, left unattended, ostensibly will lead to boredom, or worse, inactivity which will only hinder and impede the occupied state. So either state, occupied or non should be consumed by a self imposed madness thereby benefiting both states of being.
The madness of the occupied state will increase the output of that state, and the freedom, and that is what we speak of, freedom of mind, will only liberate the state of being when the mind is not occupied in its employed state of being.
Thus, the reader might be assured that a state of productive eudemonia might be experienced by the writer in either states of occupation or leisure, the one contributing to the other. It must be stated that neither states of being are chosen, both are a product of self, but both reacting towards a state which might result in a perpetual pleasure, a euphoria resulting from an assurance that the ends accomplished are enjoyed by the means.
So it must be confessed that there, although there is no end to the echo in the cavernous depths, this cacophony of sounds, might be a joyous one. It might be confessed that this Ehren E. Clark might be a geological marvel in this cavern, this well deep into the Earth which has no end. This Ehren E. Clark is a unique wonder waiting to be beheld, with a character uniquely his own and forever to perpetuate.

2008-12-31T23:12:00.001-08:00

Discovering ruins of a medieval abbey, wandering through it with a strange reverence, awe, one is filled with a feeling of wonderment. Upon exploring a castle nestled along the Rhine, why is it that our thoughts are elevated as we reflect to an age long past, stories recreated in our minds? Why when touring France and upon entering a cathedral, with its towering nave and illumination of light, we enter, not with a cheerful exuberance as we might have felt upon discovering the structure externally, but once inside this immensity, with a sense of solemnity, spiritual contemplation, rejuvenation and inspiration?
When a tourist navigates the ruins of the forum in Rome, the mind takes an imaginative journey to a day when all of this was in its grandeur, when the jagged remnants once housed senators and emperors. Westminster abbey recalls to the mind a sense of a thousand years of English history- kings, queens, stirring our minds and our hearts with a distant past, contrasting the busy streets outside and the flashing lights of the city. Even more so the ruins of Stonehenge in rural England bring to mind strange images and indescribable feelings of an obscure past to the soul- a mysticism is experienced at the mystery of an ancient culture with unseen abilities to create such a structure. The human spirit is elevated to new heights- as at the pyramids at Giza- a tribute to human capabilities and spirituality that is baffling to our modern sensibility.
Such is the same with wondrous contemplations of nature. The cliffs of Dover, on a cloudy day with stormy sees inspire the mind. The sun as it sets over the Pyrenees in the south of France; a forgotten rustic cottage nestled in some wood in the Alps- a sense of pure magic is felt. Even more dramatic are the moors of England, the Highlands of Scotland- they fill us completely with feelings unknown- a fullness and awe at the sublime creations of nature, and a connection with the Earth and that which is eternal.
The glory of the Danube meandering through Salzburg, the Volga, produce a new feeling with every turn and every mile of its continual flow of waters flooding our inner being with a wealth of permanence in the land; in this connection to that which is timeless we feel a security in the present- in our own self. We feel connected with the waters of the Mediterranean, the islands of Greece, the sun over the valleys and vineyards of Italy- a sense of calm repose with what once was and still is and will be continue to be. This sublime feeling of the world, that outward world, physical and natural, gives a greater sense of who we are, the possibilities we possess and the possibility of things to come challenging the anxieties we may have felt before we are transfixed by these revelations.
As we leave behind those things of a more temporal nature and contemplate that which is timeless and sublime, we reconnect with the spirit of humanity. The past and the present become one and for a moment we forget our troubles, feel the minutia of our lives and feel a sense of calm, a peacefulness and repose as we are lost in the wholeness of the universe. All in life is transient: the world seems to move forward at an alarming rate. One moment we are in our youth and the next we are experiencing the signs of age. Those things which connect us with something outside of ourselves, something of a more permanent nature, a timelessness, galvanize us for a moment to the non-ephemeral, the universal.

Pippi

2008-12-31T22:26:00.000-08:00

Pippi Explores Place
Ehren E. Clark

Seasoned artist Anne Watson, Utah native who has lived in New York City for the past 18 years as a professional artist and has recently moved back to her home, has expressed her anxiety that “I cannot make sense of place very well, or time, or sense or nonsense”. In the upcoming exhibit Pippi Explores Place at the Art Access Gallery, the artist uses various media to initiate a search for truth, her truth, a confrontation with reality, and trying to make sense of that “place” she has been searching for- her “place”, her sense of identity, her oneness with the world. This accomplishment is achieved through a very unlikely source: through the eyes of the fondly remembered mischievous, tenacious and lovable childhood icon Pippi Longstocking.
Watson’s canvases are angelic, whimsical, surprising, naive, clever, aggressive, and never predictable. Painted by the hands of an expert who has left traditional painting behind and abandoned herself to forms of pure meaning, Watson’s work in the exhibit is a series of paintings linked together by common elements. She explains “I don’t do work which stands alone...it is a narrative, a story, a series.”
But it is Pippi Longstocking, childhood misfit, who is the star of the show, and she leads the narrative -as Virgil leads Dante through Purgatory and Paradise. Watson, who remembers and cherishes memories of Pippi from her childhood, owns the books and shares them with her daughter, has an interesting relationship with the icon- “muse”, “misfit”, “her voice”. “She speaks to me and helps me understand things- takes me through the ‘landscape’...she is the voice.”
Watson grew up in the west coast, left for college and subsequently received her MA in fine art at NYU. She has lived in New York City for 18 years as a successful artist, and in returning to her native Utah, has come full circle. She and her daughter have lived now in Utah for 3 years and her integrity as an artist has led her to this exhibition- “trying to understand place”. As she has returned to America’s heartland, she has sought truth in places of thought, places of landscape, places of environment, and places of self.
Using Pippi, Watson is able to explore her “landscape”. Pippi wanders capriciously through the hinterlands of the Western USA (which Watson rediscovers from her childhood), in a way that is honest, unprejudiced and unbounded, allowing for a free flow of thought. A motif which runs through the cycle is a flow words, randomly placed, arbitrarily positioned, seemingly autonomous and express innermost thoughts and feelings of Pippi her discovery of the “landscape”. These words are free form -the voice of Pippi: childish ramblings- but prophetic.
These flows of thought are most predominate of war- a theme pervasive in the cycle - that reality which forms an integral part of “place” so relevant to the “landscape” in which we all exist. When Watson was asked how Pippi feels about the war, she quickly responded that “she hates it! She hates the war, she hates violence, she hates stupidity.” When asked of her own feelings on the war, she stated; “I don’t have answers, but that is truth- facing uncertainty about what we are doing.... and the harm being done”. Watson uses Pippi’s honesty to discover “place” through the eyes of a child, which are susceptible and sensitive to injustice and the subtle inhumanities we are so inured to.
Watson is “grappling with place” and hopes that others will embark on a similar search. What Watson gives inevitably is honesty, and “the more honest the work, the more universal it is”. Watson wonders, when the public see the show, if “she (Pippi) will see you and talk to you, or maybe some will just walk by and yell, or some will simply say -‘dumb puppet’.”
Maybe after seeing these works some may go back to their attics, dust off their books of Pippi Longstocking and reminisce on that crazy rambunctious youth we all read and relive those memories, thought, ideals, and hold on a bit more to that which so often seems lost.

Michael and his Tricycle

2008-12-31T21:10:00.000-08:00

Michael is a dreamer. Some young boys want to be firemen, or cowboys; Michael wanted to be a world class cyclist. This dream began when Michael was only three. While he watched television, he saw something that made him dream big. Michael saw on the television an amazing group of men, racing down a hill on something that Michael had never seen before because he was just three. Michael loved his toy cars and the machine that he saw on the television with men going fast down a hill was a little like a car but it was not. It had wheels and went down the road, fast, very fast, but this was something different and new. This machine had two wheels, not four, and, like a car, went fast, very fast. It was the speed that really caught Michael’s attention. This made Michael very excited. Michael had a new dream now, to be like one of these men, speeding down a hill with the world flying by him. He asked what that amazing machine was and his parents told him it was called a bicycle.
It was only a few weeks before Christmas and all that Michael could think about was what he asked, and asked and asked for- a bicycle like the one he saw on the television. Then he could go as fast as the men he saw on the TV. When Christmas morning came, racing downstairs to see what Santa had brought them, who do you think was first to see his presents. Michael because Michael ran fast, as fast as he could down the stairs, knowing that when he got there he would see that wonderful new shiny bicycle that would let him fly down the hill like the men he saw on the television. But, when Michael went into the living room, he saw something that looked a little like the bicycle, but it definitely was not like the one he had seen on TV.
What Michael found next to the Christmas tree had three wheels, not two; it was the same color as the one he saw on TV, had a handle like the one on the TV, but it had three wheels! Michael was confused. How could he go fast on that? Michael started to cry. He had wanted to be that man so much, to feel what he felt, and to go fast. Michael did not want to even look at this “thing”, which was definitely NOT a bicycle. His parents called it a tricycle and Michael did not like what Santa had brought him.
Day after day, the tricycle sat outside the back door. Michael became, day by day, little by little more and more curious till one day Michael thought he would look closer at the “thing” brought by Santa. He looked closely at it, the three wheels, the red frame, the shiny handle bars; Michael started to like his new present from Santa. His heart started to pump a little faster and then faster still. Faster till he touched the handle bars, then grabbed them, and as he grabbed those strong handle bars, he threw his leg over the seat and get on the new tricycle.
The first thing Michael saw, like the man on TV, was that his legs were long enough to turn the pedals. Then he noticed his arms reached to the handle bars like the man on the television. Maybe this tricycle was not such a bad thing after all. Michael suddenly had an exciting thought. “Maybe, maybe, with three wheels I can go even faster” he said to himself! He called to his mother to see if she would let him drive along the sidewalk. He did not even notice that because it had three wheels he did not have to learn how to ride this tricycle, but suddenly he felt his dream might come true!
Michael started slowly and then peddled harder and then harder and even harder till he felt the wind on his face, saw the world go by and he felt he WAS that man on the TV! But for Michael, he thought he could go even faster. He had THREE wheels, not two! He did not know that the next year he would get a two wheeled bicycle with training wheels. The year after that the training wheels would be gone. Who knows, maybe someday Michael really will race down the hill with the world flying by him, going fast, very fast.

2008-12-31T14:09:00.001-08:00

A World Without Art
The concept seems frightening when it is considered. What would the world be like without art? What would the world be like without music, without film and other media, without literature? Yes, this would be frightful, a desert. This is not simply rhetoric, but a reality which is averted by artists who are responsible for making the world vibrant, cultural, colorful, interesting, enjoyable as well as provocative, meaningful, insightful and interesting.
When the artist is not patronized, what is the result? The result is that society falls short of where it could be- a place where free expression is allowed to prosper and grow. The world is not only beautified but new ideas are allowed to cultivate and challenge norms; in short…progression. The arts allow a society to progress through painting, sculpture, video, song, performance, film, all creating a dialogue, a forum by which those whose calling it is to be an artist might be understood and heard while making life worth living, through beauty.
When a community gravitates around a few select “celebrity” artists who are revered and paid mass sums, where do others, countless others with as much to say through their art as their abundance of talent, find an outlet where their art might be seen and “heard?”
Sadly, in most communities this is the case. There is a monopoly on art by the few and a recession for many. This by no means implies that those monopolists are anything greater than the others, they are not. Art may be compared to a corporation where the “giants” leave main street deserted. In our community there are giants and they need not be mentioned as they are so well known. But as galleries such as OneTen are faced with closure and the spectrum of quality art is ignored as degenerate, there is something wrong with this situation.
The exhibition, “A World Without Art” was created to challenge the thinking of a community who sees little or no value in art aside from that which they are accustomed to and feel comfortable with. This show is a pro-active statement against such norms in our community. It is an opportunity where many artists have been given the chance to say what they think about the inequality which is the art world in our town. We will not sit lazily around and complain, but show the population of this area that there is more out there, there are more artists worth considering than the few that monopolize the attention and revenue which could be more evenly dispersed…if only the public is willing to stop, consider and think!
Much time and talent has gone into this exhibition, placed directly on Center Street in stores that have closed down due to similar circumstances. Many members of the community pass by this location every day. Many will notice it, and sadly many will not take even take a first look. Regardless, this is an opportunity for those who have worked on the show, artists with much talent and creativity who center their lives around art, live and breathe by it, to show what they can do. This is not fantasy art or fairy tale art which belongs in children’s books, or art that should be used for religious purposes.
To patronize such art is fine, but don’t stop there! There is more to see, more to think about and experience. If the world were left only with the Walmarts of the art world, people might stop and realize what they have missed out on. If the world was left without art, it would cease to be.

2007-11-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

The current exhibition at the Salt Lake City Art Center: “Printmaking by Four American Masters- Pop Art through the End of the Century” combines collage, drawings and painting from four exceptional and ground-breaking artists: Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Brice Marden, and Tony Fitzpatrick in four narrative cycles of prints. Each cycle is unique in character and poignancy of form and meaning, representing each artist’s approach to their medium and their approach to their subject matter within a narrative cycle.
Brice Marden’s prints, “Ten Day Series 1971” has arguably the least representational subject matter, yet is charged in content. Marden’s prints are highly minimal, exploring the relationships between space, shape and color. The pieces work together and not individually. One may categorize the works into shape- rectangular or square, and how Marden approaches the spaces within the forms using color. The profundity of his approach is how he contrasts the shapes and the spaces within the shapes using variations of shade: white, grey or black, and the nuances, brought out by these. A harmonious whole in the cycle is achieved which gives an ethereal and contemplative effect to the narrative.
Frank Stella, a pioneer of Minimalism, steps outside of his roots in his narrative cycle “Had Gadya: A Response to Yiddish Passover Song, 1982-84.” These lithographs focus on form and color, each substantiating the other in unified compositions. Unlike Marden, these works are highly expressionistic, uniting recognizable geometric shapes in the style of Leger, and colorful abstractions similar to that of De Kooning. The product is a Modernist use of shape and color to create a flat plane through juxtapositions. Each has its own unique palate of color and form, which gives holistic cohesion to the individual work and together as a narrative a homogenous whole.
Tony Fitzpatrick’s ‘Infinite Wager’ is a more capricious cycle, using a multiplicity of visual puns- iconography of playing cards, astrological symbols, tarot cards, etc., in a collage-like manner creating unique compositions: “Moth of Clubs”, “The King of the Penny Poker”, etc., incorporated into a cycle, which is purely banal or high art. It is the nature of his collage (visual puns) and their relationships within the cycle that makes this high art.
Certainly the ultimate usurper of the everyday to fine art was Andy Warhol. The exhibition shows the silk-screen prints of the artist’s, not merely a pastiche of his work, but a specific cycle documenting prominent Jews from the twentieth-century. Albert Einstein, George Gershwin, Gertrude Stein, Golda Meir, Franz Kafka are but a few. This is the ultimate example in the exhibit of the strength of the cycle, here not only formal but ideological. Warhol, unlike many of his other recognizable works gives each individual portrait a varied, skewed and quilt-like coloring, each unique and seemingly fit to the individual. For example the Kafka portrait has fields of varied blues with a flash of yellow, where as the Stein portrait incorporates softer, pastel fields of hue.
The exhibition is one worth seeing, not merely for the purposes of viewing great artists such as Warhol or a Stella, but to examine and appreciate how each artist approaches a unique concept within a narrative context, and how the relationships of prints in the cycle are articulated. The strength of each can be seen and all may be appreciated as each are considered.

2007-11-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

Garrett Adkinson
Sometimes art pieces speak to the viewer. Sometimes you speak to them. Here, in Garrett Adkinson’s exhibit there is a dramatic tension as the art object and the observer are faced one with another. In a manner like Rauchenberg whom has been an influence in Adkinson's work, art as object is placed here in a certain rawness which begs its “artness” to be recognized. It seems that through the density of the leather “canvas” the “artness” from within is pushing itself, thrusts itself, forces itself through the medium, towards the viewer who is left to accept or reject the object. This is a limited proximity whose density pushes and thrusts the limit from the space which it occupies. The uniformness of the cycle of analogous objects, all with like dimension and structure, yet each with its own unique sense of “voice” as it pushes from within, gives the nature of the objects an individuality with sensuousness of that working from within. Only by the amorphous smudges of paint on the exterior of the forms does the viewer reconcile that this is merely a lifeless piece of art.

Brandy Gunnell
Rarely in this cluttered world do we have the opportunity to stop and see a life which is truly uninhabited- an existential experience where spaces we are so used to from day to day without much noticing them, show us what they would be without us. In Brandy Gunnell’s cycle and video, we find one analogous form, a construction of smaller pyramids, together forming a larger-itself a reference to life gone by, history, man extinct. This structure is cannily placed in a laundry mat, a parking garage, a library, a corridor, but this is not Richard Estes’ humanless world, this is more stark and uncanny. This is life which not only is devoid of humans, but so empty, so long since past, that there is a sense of something like you feel at the end of “planet of the Apes”. Only in the video do we find some forms of life- a statue of the virgin, a praying mantis, a cobra- all images of a mystical nature which add an eerie quality to the evocation of memory and loss. Maybe one could discern from all of this the impermanence which we all share.

Sri Whipple
If you were to combine Barnum and Baily with Xaviera Hollander, you would find a very sterile version that what we find in Sri Whipple. Whipple graduated in Fine Arts at the university of Utah and has proven himself to be one of the most imaginative minds to come from that institution. A few words come to mind when viewing his work, and, let it be stated first: pornographic is not one of them because it is not. Thoughts running through my head as I was lured into these images: comical nightmare, gloriously garish, teasing but overtly sensual, graceful corporeal shapes, Disney meets Henry Fuseli, Minnie and Micky on crack! Lyrical and confrontational. There is no simple way to define Whipple’s work and his lucid imagination, but he confronts, compels, provokes, even defies (as in the overtly sexual use of Jean Fouquet’s more subtle treatment of his Madonna). His forms are undefinable, something of a Heironomous Bosh grotesque for the millennium. But however you find this display, you just might be dazzled by a luscious display of some other world which Whipple has created for us which entertains and provokes and is not easily forgotten.

2007-11-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

The work of Frida Kahlo, artist from Mexico who is known as a surrealist, through her life-long relationship with Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and her tendency to express her inner turmoil through self portraits which are highly symbolic, has only been popularized in the last ten years. Since then, her image is seen frequently- commercially and through a mass of contemporary literature which attempts to make sense of an artist whose art is as complex as her personality- and in large measure- due to it.
Kahlo, although having lived in Paris and worked with Duchamp and Breton, did not consider herself surrealist . She inherited surrealist associations from the dream like symbolism she used although she states “I never painted my dreams, I painted my reality”. She has publically given little importance to her own art although Rivera consistently supported it and asserted its value and importance as modern art.

Kahlo’s work has a general resemblance to Mexican folk art- in particular, a resemblance to small votive pictures known as retables which devout Catholics consider sacred in their churches. More than that, much of her imagery mirrors traditional Madonnas revered since the middle ages. Like the Madonna images which are frequently eluded to, Kahlo’s images are highly iconic- frontal, formal, serene, reverent, confrontational. More so she is an icon herself -timeless and monumental. She is stoic in expressing the inexpressible- her inner battles due in part to a bus accident which impaired her for life, her intense relationship with Rivera, her status as a Mexican artist, and as a woman. Kahlo is as much a work of art, herself, as her paintings.
However, beyond the symbolism exposing her struggles, beyond the iconic images that have become so familiar contemporaneously- especially to women- we know remarkably little about the “real” Frida Kahlo. Not the tragic Mexican icon in the shadow of Rivera, but thoughts she had, the emotions she experienced, her passions, her desires, her weaknesses. We know about her suffering well from her work, but who was this human being who suffered so greatly and worked so profoundly?
The exhibit “Her Spirit is Stronger than angels: Frida Kahlo Though the lens of Nicolas Muray”, unlocks mystery, reveals another side of Kahlo, through a candid relationship and intimacy which Kahlo and Muray shared, which we, as her audience, hitherto have seen none of in her works. Nicolas Muray, Hungarian, came to America in 1913 to train as a photographer, opened a studio in Greemwich Village, New York City, and through his relationship with artist Miguel Covarrubias, met Kahlo in 1931 and began a relationship that would last a decade.
Twenty-four photographs (some displayed in the United Sates for the first time), intimate letters, as well as pre-Columbian artifacts displayed in glass cases, which appear in some of the photos ( a passion of Kahlos) compose the exhibit. We see photographs which range from several black and whites, some snap shot style, and some more formal. These formal ones, which allow the viewer to see Muray’s virtuosity as a photographer, have a technical execution which is astounding. They are pure, bold and bright- deep colors and contrasts which reflect the vibrancy of Mexico in Frida’s clothing, and there is a clarity which makes her eyes and skin radiate.
They look fresh and new, but the remarkable aspect of this exhibit, these photos, is that these images are seen through the eyes of Muray, someone she knew, trusted, confided in- loved: not some faceless nameless audience. Three of the most technically remarkable images: “Frida with Hand Earrings”, “Frida with Pink and Green Blouse”, “Frida with Blue Satin Blouse”, offer a glimpse of the woman, real and human who has humor, inquisitiveness, vulnerability, coyness, sensitivity, and who is as vibrant as her own country.
Through these images of Frida seen through Muray’s eyes we see someone very human, laughing, emotional, bold, sensitive, sincere, loving, and more honest than we have ever seen her. For one moment, we see her as she lets down her shroud of the tragic figure and she is exposed in all her wonderful vicissitudes, her liveliness and her humanity.

“Nick
I love you like I would an angel
You are a lillie of the valley in my life
I will never forget you, never, never
You are my whole life
I hope you will never forget this
Frida”
May 31, 1931

2007-11-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

With the name Rembrandt van Rijn mentioned, certain connotations come to mind: “stuffy old master”, “someone from long ago with little or no importance”, “someone whose paintings are worth more than a 747.” Some may be familiar with his famous use of strong contrasts of light and dark (tenebrism), his mastery at portraits, maybe the Night Watch comes to mind or some other painting not given much attention to in an old gallery on a trip to some city in Europe. But most who know the name Rembrandt do not attach much importance to him and the works he created 350 years ago as relevant to society today. But maybe that doesn’t have to be so.
The LDS Church Art History Museum is running a show displaying 46 various small etchings completed by the artist at certain points in his career, gathered from the museum’s own collection, those at BYU and private lenders; etchings of a religious nature (something not common to the artist as he was a Dutch Protestant and the Protestants were adverse to images of a religious nature). But, as the exhibit reveals to us, these delightful pieces were near and dear to the artist and he created them regardless of the iconoclasism in Holland and represented his deep spirituality. They, despite their minuscule size, have a power and a simplicity and convey a full range of Rembrandt’s talents and a sensitivity which (arguably), is not as apparent in his larger works. There is much which can be learned by a careful viewing of these etching, reduced in their elements, and done at a more rudimentary level and because of this at times Rembrandt’s techniques are even more apparent in this simplicity.
As we have mentioned, tenebrism was something Rembrandt has been associated with throughout history (something seen earlier and probably influenced by Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio), but we can see it vividly here in the etchings, in the flourish of line and the quickness of handling. There is a full range of light and dark that we quickly become used to as we proceed throughout the exhibit. We see light emanating from Christ, divine light from above, natural lighting, lamps, candles, but what we do learn quickly is that Rembrandt’s use of lighting is not arbitrary. It is used symbolically. In the larger etching Christ on the Cross, there is a stark contrast between those figures on the right- Mary, the Magdalen, John the Baptist- bathed in light....those on the left- the Romans, Judas, etc., are cloaked in darkness. Such examples abound throughout the exhibit.
Something further which this exhibit is exceptional in revealing are the subsidiary figures. There are complicated groupings of figures such as peasants, merchants, beggars, old women, children, townspeople, etc., but all are done cursorily in a way (such as the Presentation at the Temple) which captures their simplicity, sensitivity, expression and pathos. More remarkable is the individuality with which these figures, in crowds, groups, literally thrown on top of each other, are given. The 21st century viewer may take this for granted, but in the early 1600's the idea of individuality in society, contrary to the general masses of the middle ages, was coming into being and Rembrandt’s treatment here is remarkable in this respect.
A small etching 3/4 of the way through the exhibit seems to capture what these etchings are about- the potency, the spirituality, the essence of these objects of veneration. This is a self portrait by Rembrandt. We see a man, unsure, humble, clothed in the garments of his century, whose treatment, like the other 45 etchings, handled with such sensitivity and care, invites us, like the other countless figures we have seen in the exhibit, to look closer, and we find a man whose deep pathos, spirituality and vision, gives our soul a bit of a boost. And we leave the exhibit into the open sunshine, back to our 21st century world, with a bit of gladness in our hearts and a little more air beneath our feet.

2007-11-23T16:05:00.000-08:00

Bill Viola: Ascension

Bill Viola is not only one of the great video artists of our day but one of the truly great artists of our day. His installation at the Salt Lake City Art Center: “Ascension”, is an exhibition, while combining all of its elements, is not merely comprehensive or analytic but a true holistic experience. In Viola’s case, it is an experience into consciousness, both the conscious and the subconscious. In Viola’s words, these image “wash over you”, and the subject is “revealed on an unconscious level.” Bill Viola’s installation is a timeless narrative.
As one sits in the dark room, the first activity on the large video screen, out of the blackness is a cool blue followed by an underwater scene, not easily identifiable until the sudden plunge of a body from above shatters the darkness- immediately the screen is filled with a figure and a multitude of crystalline bubbles as the surface is broken.
Along with this anonymous figure, the viewer is drawn into this subterranean world, of sights and sounds. There is a serene quiet yet there are subtleties in sound produced in this underwater world, which lends an existential sensibility. We share the space along with this motionless figure, static and transcendent of his surroundings with no distraction than his suddenly felt self-conscious self. The figure seems almost comatose yet one feels the life, which he emanates in this environment.
There is no breath, no movement, and the viewer finds themselves at harmony with this body as he sinks slowly, watching this being sinking deeper into the darkness. The figure, in a cocoon of the crystalline bubbles of crisp light and incandescent blue, ascends once more, not breaking the surface, and then once again descends slowly to the unknown.
He is motionless yet he and we are in a state of flux. Temporality is suspended, yet not temporality of mind. The figure once again ascends to the top of the plane, never encroaching beyond the limits dividing the outside world, and then begins the final descent, ostensibly towards the subconscious. Slowly, with some anxiety from the viewer, the figure transgresses the depths and sinks from sight, below the frame of the imagery.
The viewer is left with an uncanny absence and recognition of their own consciousness- either conscious or subconscious. The frame is phased out and the viewer finds themselves, with neither surface nor depth, with the vague blue that initiated the sequence…and then blackness. The journey is complete and the viewer is left to pure contemplation.
Viola’s exposition is complete, but the viewer must ask, “What is the title ‘Ascension’ to mean? Certainly the figure descended into the abyss.” It may be that Viola’s inquiry is not to explore that, which we descend to on a conscious level, but that to which we ascend to on a subconscious one.

2007-11-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

An ode To James Joyce

Speaking to myself, I found a strange impulse to castrate myself onto the ground, lying there for only a few moments as birds started surrounding me till I was lost and found my way by a lady in white who took me by the hand and I did not know where and I found myself being led by a another in someonelses arms and someonelse’s warmth and caressed as her skin melds with your and the passion you feel as you see and cannot touch grows with every step, every moment till she is lost forever and there is no place back just move forward yet who could compare alove so grand that lasted for a flickering of a snowflake and leave you into a dry desert with no water of any sustenance, why would this love so divine leave you in such a place of desolation yet a passing ship threw over its bow a boat upon which you were pulleyed up and made a merry time with the sailors who found the Irish fascinating and love to hear the folk songs of the celtic so they were sung but I left was I in a desolation, inside our can of beer as the sailors walked away humming their Irish tunes just learned and who were so merry yet here you I was trapped in a bottle until I remembered that you can see the universe in the bottom of a glass of beer, so I traveled to a planet called is a core and this land bore fruits of such color and succulence, ass was well with the strange yet beautiful creates who became my friends, with their feathers and shapes and color and majesty in their being creatures of the planet yet existing as one singular unit tilll I found that partridge was not to be eaten so I found myself back in the bottom of the bottle again till some sweed drank me and I followed the pathe to the human heart where I found not the universe but a sea of calmness a copper reddish pinkish gold the sea of love where all dwell and prostate on the ground once more I felt myself beckoned to the sea of love and I found an old dingy lying on the barren shores of the sea in its colour and hazel sky and found myself crossing to the center and I had found my center with leaders who knew my journey jet led me to believe otherwise, as they looked back to insure my safety and I found myself in the sea of love, I found myself.

2007-11-23T15:55:00.000-08:00

It is rare to have an individual of Professor Hickey’s talent and prestige in Salt Lake and it is certain that it will be well worth the time of any individual interested in arts and culture in general to attend this event. Professor Hickey’s list of achievements is quite exceptional. Some of the accomplishments of Hickey’s and honors that he has received are: Executive Director of Art in America Magazine, editor to the Village Voice and Art Issues Magazine. He has contributed to publications such as Rolling Stone, Art News, Art in America, Art Forum, Interview, Harpers Magazine, Vanity Fair, Nest, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Hickey is visiting professor at University Texas Austin, University of California Santa Barbara, Otis Parsons Institute Los Angeles, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and University of Nevada Los Vegas. He has been the subject of personal profiles in the Los Angeles Times, and airs regularly on PBS and NPR. He also owns several art galleries, written numerous books, and has been the recipient of the 2001 Mac Arthur Foundation Award.
The first thing one learns when meeting Professor Hickey is that he has a genuine love and passion for art. Only an individual with his tenacity could have had such an impact in the art world, and have had so many profound and interesting experiences.
When asked about how he analyzes art he says that he has no preconceived notions; he approaches each work he sees with an open mind. He suggests that developing a value structure for yourself, the viewer, is the best way to see art, focusing your own ideas and seeing works with an individual perspective. Concerning his views on public art- this being very relevant in our community- he mentions the controversy which surrounds works such as Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in New York, or the Washington Vietnam Veterans War Memorial controversy. To such controversy, such as that concerning the Rodin exhibit at Brigham Young University, one must not be afraid of quarrels and speak freely about your beliefs. Finally, when questioned about the nature of art in the future, he simply suggests that “it is not important, not a critical issue at this point.”
Dave Hickey has contributed to the art community prodigiously throughout his expansive and vibrant career. His profound insights of art, the extent of his contribution to the pool of knowledge in the discourse and his sincere love of art have made him a fundamental and definitive voice in the art world for several generations.

2007-11-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

WRITING WHILE HEARING ZOO

I have much to say about my hero Michael Nyman. One of the first things I loved about his music when I secumbed to it in 1993 was the spirit, the energy and realism which captured the essence of London. One feels like one is in a taxi rushing through the busy streets at night, turning the corners rapidly and having to make an abrupt stop underneath the lights of Charring Cross. So since then, since collecting vast amounts of his music, listening to it, devouring it, relishing it, savoring it, developing a taste for his more avant-garde: The Kiss, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Time will Pronounce, Aspects of Beauty, etc. While my love affair with Nyman has progressed, in certain bodies of his work I have acquired a “Coplandesque” essence to much of his music, visions of the Amarican frontier, and being an American and an Anglophile, I do not like it. I know much of Nyman’s inspirations: the baroque, early music, visual art, cinema, eastern music, history, etc., yet I have never heard the word Copland mentioned in all of my readings, and since that aesthetic has developed in my psyche, tarnishing even the most avant-garde works and I cannot loose it and it is very frustrating. So I want to discover Nyman’s true aesthetic, possibly that which I heard when I first encountered it in London. Now, after years of listening, I seek to reassess my Nyman aesthetic and readjust my thinking so I may enjoy his music as I once did and have a cab ride through the east end while in Provo Utah. So I present to myself a continuum from the very “Coplandesque" The Claim, to the less “Coplandesque" in order: Ravenous; Double Concerto for sax and cello; Gattica; The Suit and the Photograph; Libertine; Time will Pronounce; Drowning; Draughsmands contract; Carrington; Piano, End of the Affair; and even less the experimental and often cocophanic works such as ZOO, Caprices; The CTHWAHL; Noises, sounds; The Kiss; The Man and the Hat; Noises Sounds Prospero's Books; and finally Wonderland. It is with Wonderland that I find my way back to Nyman, his aesthetic that has led to a 15 year obsession. I wander the streets of Soho in Wonderland from my bed. I still hear Copland, but this essence evokes thoughts of landscape, “frontiers" Nyman is exploring just as Copland did, but not necessarily the American. This expanse, the landscape, is London, the untamed city, cocophany of the crossroads of the world: the wealthy and the poor, the mania and the calm, the individual and the masses, the storm and the quiet, the despair and the frenzy of boisterousness, the underground and the double decker, the to and fro, the coming and going, the jubilation and degradation, the poor and the rich, the benefactor and the bitch, the townies and the fashionistas. Charing Cross, Islignton, Angel, Holliway Road, Turnpike lane, Bank, Tower Bridge, Tottenham Court Road, (especially Tottenham court Road where I discovered Nyman), Leichester Square, Tuffnel Park, etc……………………………………….Scape, scope, landscape of London………the physical and the sublime, but wherever Nyman goes the landscape goes. And I will follow in my cab of dreams. London is so far away, but still within accesible as I play the Water Dances.