Emily Smith

Today I just want to share.  Blown away...

EMILY SMITH: When A Man Decides To Hurt You
PARADIGM GALLERY & STUDIO, Philadelphia, PA (July 22 - August 20, 2016)

Artist Statement: In the spring of 2015, I was assaulted by a stranger on my walk home from the gym. I was left unconscious on the street with a severe concussion, broken jaw and sinus, and shattered tooth. The assailant was never brought to justice. 

When A Man Decides to Hurt You is not only an attempt for me to process the event, but it is also an examination of the profound physical and emotional impact of violence in America, particularly against women. 

I juxtaposed watercolors with explosive fabric patterns; a pairing that is meant to both agitate the eye and champion more "feminine" media. They are framed in traditional Americana patterns, a reminder that mine is an unexceptional American story. We live in a society where physical, sexual, and emotional violence against women is commonplace, and violence stemming from poverty, racial injustice, and lack of support for those struggling with their mental health is part of our everyday landscape. 

These paintings document one story in a sea of stories. I hope it leads us to a confrontational conversation: what is happening here in America? What role are we all playing in the systemic nature of violence? And what are we actively doing to stop it?

Anxiety

Existential Sadness 

Jaw

Mouth

Concussion

Confusion & Fear

Home From The Hospital

Kay (As An Angel)

Numbness

Resilience

Self-Portrait In Mirror

My ART Top 10

Actually I am really distressed that I can't point you to a readily available archive (you know, Youtube videos, etc.) of many of the works herein (and many others as it happens; it seems all the genius things in the world disappear into the mist, unless a superfamous person made them) so I'm going to have to try to describe things that simply can't be done justice to. Bear with me.

1. Eleo Pomare, "Junkie", a solo section from Blues for the Jungle, a dance piece he choreographed in 1962 (far ahead of it's time IMHO). Saw it once on public TV, then never again (why? was this brilliant piece of work embarrassing to someone?). The solo excerpt is here (probably where I first saw it); if the original film becomes available I'll let you know.

In "Junkie", Mr. Pomare embodies the tragedy of a street person not just hopelessly addicted to heroin but to his own illusory self-image as the above-it-all, got-it-all-together, smoothest-talking, hippest baddest alpha-male dandy there could be; his flailing and swooning is as much the body language of street elegance, sophistication and 'representing' as it is a too-high loss of coordination, and it's a damning, heartbreaking play of irreconcilable opposites complementing each other in a hopeless entropic downward spiral to the final end.

This dance is made from the street, from the reality of life not its aestheticisation; in the same way as Buddhists say their practice must work with the raw stuff of life to "find the jewel within the manure of experience"; the same as how the blues, from the title, holds and somehow transforms suffering, reminding us of the soul moving on eternally, untouched, ever-strong. This is one of the few works I've seen dive right to the bottom, to dig down to the center for the jewel. The jewel is the compassion we are allowed to feel by seeing this character's internal challenges so nakedly.

Another such superlative work is Sun Ra's film Space Is The Place, in which dove down into the darkest places of street life when he could've easily gone the opposite way. He had a point to make.

It seems African-American artists have to lead the way on this. I'm happy to give them the credit, but I wish the 'art world' as a whole could really see it and learn from it. Why at this late date is it so uncomfortable with street-level 'reality'? The class issue harks back to Millet if not before, to the time when portraits of anyone but the King were unthinkable. The emphasis has been on political propagandability (my word), a worthy cause but shouldn't equal time be leased for finding the human gem inside the wretchedness? Or must that wait, until after we have made the world whole?

2. "It is not necessary to be someplace else in order not to be here," or, In Order Not To Be Here, Deborah Stratman, 2002. Viewed this intense yet strangely soothing (up until the end) edit of surveillance video at the 2004 Whitney Biennale inside a giant Diet Coke can, it's never left me because in a way I was already there; maybe you too. It's composed of surveillance videos from gated neighborhoods, convenience stores, the Mexican border, parking lots; and also some staged shots of a girl sleeping, an alarm clock, a house burning, and a suspect being chased (the creepiest part). There's a lot of silent, still imagery; nothing happens. There's an unspoken tension hanging over the whole thing, and in a sense everything we are, and are capable of, is captured there in the electric vibrating silence/stillness. While watching, noting that all the land, streets, sidewalks, parking lots and property are now under private ownership and private surveillance, I reflected on Burroughs' line from Nothing Here Now But The Recordings, "Listen all you boards, governments, syndicates, nations of the world / And you, powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory / To take what is not yours / To sell out your sons forever! To sell the ground from unborn feet / for ever? for Eve-R..."
Entire video used to be online, now only a preview here.

3. Richard Diebenkorn (can I sneak David Park in here too? esp. the late paintings). Everything, ('cept a lot of the Ocean Park series: nice, critics' darlings, but not my darlings). I don't know really what to say about him, but- what wholly satisfying paintings to anyone who likes abstraction and/or figuration, what a totally unique yet somehow inevitable approach, what consistently interesting color and what relaxed and assured design/drawing/tone etc etc etc. And enlightening and pleasing, this.

4. Sun Ra. The man, the myth, the art, music, poetry, Arkestras and other ensembles, films, and on and on and on... the whole thing. As a reviewer for the bio Space Is The Place put it, you'd need something the size of an encyclopedia to accurately record his activities. Sun Ra's life proves that the Universe is in charge: no one could (would?) ever plan to do what he did, and actually make it happen, not in a billion years. Like the Mona Lisa, 400 years from now they'll still be trying to figure him out. Good luck.

5. Giovanni Bellini. Everything, especially the Christ. As a child, agog knowing the past and future eternal of every atom in every universe infinite. As the martyr, being both dead and alive, here and now and everywhere, all time and space. Mother joins him there.

6. Frankenstein, The Living Theatre, 1965 (beginning only, here, 5:23 til 11:31). I saw this as a child, shocked. Somewhat later I encountered (they deserve their own post) some of Mabou Mines in the 70s productions (I saw 4-5 works as a kid, & later the anti-H bomb Dead End Kids, both live and film). Still shocked by the first avant-garde theater that I knew of. Forget about descriptions.

7. Leon Kossoff, the more '3-D' portraits particularly. I like to look away from the likeness to the paint, the many layers and tangles of expression & energy, a simulacrum of nature's fiery fecundity, a glorious mess, a vivid abstract paean to passion that I bet Pollock and De Kooning wish they'd wrote. There's one great monograph, brilliantly detailed photography, but you'll have to search.

8. Poet Steve Dalachinsky declaiming with all burners on, superdancer Ximena Garnica and the very artistic, melodic, tasteful drummer/percussionist Tim Barnes at Vision Festival 9, 2004. I think there's audio somewhere but it's not enough. Ximena embodied the Cosmos, or Time, or I don't know what, just that it was all and everything; the reference come to mind is the Gurdjieff movements, but this was more the being than the implying of something greater.

This performance was the realization of the Vision vision, where three totally independent disciplines merge perfectly to create something wholly beyond any sum of parts. It was one of those performances where I think, "Am I really seeing this?"

Emily Hennings performs a dance at the Cabaret Voltaire

 9. Dada, despite its misogyny and inherent contradictions, 'cause it's close to my heart 'cause its courageous, antiwar, and anti left-brain; give me the right brain any day. And because it's funny, and the art is beautiful (I'll deal with my hangup with 'beauty' another day), because the women showed up the men so completely, so often. This is what art needs to give the world, at least part of it. Dada MOMA fulfilled any expectations I might have of a museum exhibition and then some, but online, I can't find the horse with gas mask that welcomed me to the show so magnificently. He kind of pre-empted the art..


10. My experience of life has been a piece of art, a creative reconstruction of reality, an impression only, surely not the thing itself (Epictetus). I will tell you about Axi-Dential Enterprises, a work/performance at a Baltimore outdoor artfest in the 70s, that piqued me tremendously. A wooden tilting maze after a Labyrinth game board, with puzzling existential features, enigmatic detours, and curious instructions, calling to me from a place of knowing, of working knowledge that would help me get through a life that was quite as confounding as the board. Thankfully, the artist was very nice, he sat down with me and tried to answer my questions and explain what was on his mind when he made it. I left even more confused but optimistic: there was some kind of theory that made sense if I could just work it out... and I've been trying ever since.

That sense of unknowing has become a kind of hopeful mantra for me, guiding me through the darkness of knowing. I thank that man now for introducing me to ART the mystery, ART the promise of all you'll need, ART the thing to see... The greatest art gives one the feeling that the artist knows beyond doubt the secret doorways in our life, the inner essences of this life, but is not giving anything away. It's not our ken to know, just to support these cultural shamans. Art's about expressing the inexpressible. Great art tends a fire banked in the soul's hearth, quietly, insistently urging us on to nameless knowing.

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11 - 20. Coming up.

Worshipping at the wrong altar

Is this art?

This, Mark Pauline's "ultimate transgression", is but the prelude to everything else he's cooked up. He thoughtfully never includes any theoretical underpinnings. 


Is this art?

Everyone says it is, but for the wrong reasons: this is not a conceptual barbarian at the gates of art history and propriety; this is a very beautiful, compositionally balanced abstract sculpture of some aesthetic refinement, which you could see if you would just pull your minds out of the gutter. JK.  Duchamp was teaching us to see, in the same way Cage was teaching us to hear. Sun Ra published a poem on a similar theme, I'll get into that on a later post..


Is this art?

Oh Johnnie Ray (my brother) (detail), 2010

..with a capital A? For Studio Museum of Harlem's 2007 solo show of Henry Taylor director Thelma Golden thought to remind us she considered him an "outsider", hedging her bets on this uniquely powerful voice with a BA from CalArts , who thankfully continues to forge ahead, regardless.

Look at this man ⬆, so deeply conflicted yet holding on, keeping the faith. His is the existential tension that can lead to hypertension; his, the battle between the internal reality of a moral edict and the unrelenting social 'disintegration' of same.

You'll see this. profound radar in much of Taylor's work, and occasional dispensing with the linear narrative for a slightly surreal affect. All his work feels real, grown in SoCal sun, bringing the interiority of its African-American, and other, experience in a way photos never could.


I've just started; more questions coming soon...

Henri Matisse, seeking harmony Part 1

What a joy to look at Matisse. For once, life makes sense. All the elements of existence are harmonized, seen to be One, while still existing in their own dimensions, of color, space, mass, biology and/or chemistry/physics. Matisse intuited the harmony in life and deconstructed painting practice to put it forth, a daring move, and a contrary one considering that the trend, led by Picasso, was to emphasize the Self, the emotional tangle, the brusque intemperate energy of humankind alone, whether in Cubism's explosion of sense perception into multiple angles, in Dada's furious denunciation of "civiliziation" hahaha in favor of a new (somewhat misogynist -but wait- and hierarchical) society of harmless foolishness (Dada tho not perfect my fave movement in aht), in the Surrealist jumble of "civilization's" best and worst instincts (side note: tho Dada and especially Surrealism were somewhat reflections of the society they reacted against, their inchoate and hotly debated core beliefs allowed for women to make their own rules if they were bold enough, and there's sort of a feminine aspect to such 'cultural anarchy' despite the inevitable misogyny; dissolution, disrobing of such carefully and capitalistically determined sociocultural edifices, the by-now inarguable hierarchies that gestated for world wars. Surrealism, though even more misogynistic -side note; do you see a male clothed, female unclothed? run! this is not the "revolution" it's advertised to be, rather it's title could be "patriarch with chattel"- relied on dreams for much of its content, sort of a Lunar model of art rather than the Solar model of, let's say, the previous Academicians or the Pre-Raphaelites; unfortunately the Surrealist 'revolution' was founded on aesthetic principles not moral ones), or through any other 'movements' of that time.

Matisse sat alone, like a Buddha on a rock, feeling kinship with the Impressionists for their reverence of Nature; but Matisse went one further: "When we speak of Nature it is wrong to forget that we are ourselves a part of Nature. We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe."

Jackson Pollack apparently took the hint.

Let's look at some pictures. Here's an early, yet controversial one.

'

'Woman With A Hat' 

Who is this woman! Matisse has captured an unguarded moment of someone who obviously feels abandoned, neglected, apart from things; although a proper exemplar of bourgoise femininity, immaculately well-appointed and groomed, she looks back from a mighty solitary place. Many painters had lavished exquisite care on portraits of women, but generally from the "outside"; their regard was aesthetic and/or somewhat sexual, if not idealized or mythic/symbolic. Matisse drew this from the 'inside', revealing almost embarrassingly the stark aloneness behind the mask of social attainment, to a public who didn't care (and who generally still don't, we prefer our public women to be other than mirrors). Methinks the quite savage reaction Matisse got to this picture was as much for its eloquent evocation of the true state of women in that society, as it was for his use of "unsanctioned" color.

So who is this? No other than Matisse's firebrand wife Amelie (Parayre), who indeed came to feel quite neglected and abandoned and left him after 31 years of modeling and marriage. 

Of course this is only the early Matisse, which although provoking controversy, does not embody the harmony I want to speak of. But instead of taking a month to write some monumental piece, an overview of his entire career, we'll go perhaps picture by picture so I can actually get this thing out; stay tuned. Matisse will be an ongoing exploration but there will be interjections of other things as they arise. The problem of writing about art is that everything leads to something else and I can't say it all at once.

Thanks for listening.