Monthly Archives: May 2014

“Illustration and Imagination:” a Terrific Show at the Rockwell

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The Rockwell Museum continues to go from strength to strength. “Art of the American West” often conjures up traditional scenes of cowboys and Indians, or perhaps of breathtaking (unpeopled) vistas. In recent years the Rockwell has been energetically bringing us both, but has paired them with Native art, and with contemporary art of western North America.
Last week we looked at the spectacular sculpture exhibit by Abraham Anghik Ruben, self-described as “a contemporary artist who happens to be Inuvialuit.” Paired with that show is “Illustration and Imagination: W.H.D. Koerner’s Western Paintings” – a stunning show by a master from the golden age of illustration.
Like N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish, Koerner was a student of the great Howard Pyle. We have an affection for this crowd, because when our sons were in elementary school we repeatedly made a 60-mile drive to the Brandywine River Museum, where so much of their art is on view. I once encountered Andrew Wyeth as we were both walking across the courtyard. He could see that I recognized him, and he looked awfully worried, but I just gave him a smile and a nod. He smiled and nodded back, with an look of inexpressible relief. How many of YOU can say that you made Andrew Wyeth’s day? Especially by NOT speaking to him.
Eighty years ago, when radio and “talkies” were brand new and television was scarcely a dream, America was awash with weekly and monthly magazines. They were voracious for words… hundreds of articles, short stories, and novel serializations hit the stands every week. And the stands were so crowded that they could short-circuit the viewer’s eyes. To leap out from the crowd, and coax that dime from the customer’s pocket, editors needed artwork – stunning, eye-catching artwork – and they needed it every week.
As much as the artwork itself, this fact staggered me as I looked at Koerner’s work. Canvas after canvas bore complete oil paintings, probably 36 inches by 30 or so. And these were created for magazines destined only to spend a week in the reader’s hands before being dropped into the tinder bin as next week’s issue arrived.
It’s incredibly profligate art, and could easily have been hack work. But Mr. Koerner’s grandson explained to me how the artist would spend two days reading the story to be illustrated, furiously making notes and sketches betimes. He wanted to capture not just the details of the story, but the details of the setting, and the EMOTIONS of the characters.
We can actually see this process for a 1928 piece, “Tomahawk and Rifle,” from the Rockwell’s permanent collection. This illustrates a confrontation in a palisaded frontier fort, between a Native man and a buckskin-clad mountain man, each armed as described. The family has lent the preliminary sketches.
In the first sketch, the two men are just about on top of each other. The frontiersman is on the left, his rifle slanted downward as the Indian brandishes the tomahawk overhead. For sketch two, the frontiersman holds the same pose, but the tomahawk is now held low. The protagonists are distanced by a pair of intermediate figures – behind the line of the confrontation, but effectively shouldering the two men a little farther apart.
The third sketch lays out what is largely the finished product. The figures are reversed, with the frontiersman now on the right. The native man again brandishes his weapon, but the characters are separated by the entire length of the rifle.
And it’s a l-o-n-g Kentucky/Pennsylvania rifle, as the final painting shows. There are now four intermediate figures. The rifle is perfectly level, which would have been just about impossible physically with that one-handed grip, but it makes great illustration. In fact, the rifle’s arrangement, seemingly stable but inherently UNstable, highlights the tension of the scene. The placement of secondary figures – mountain men on one side, Indians on the other – also contribute to the tension, as does the contrast between the shadowed world within the palisade and the bright sunlit vista through the gate. You can see the final painting on the museum’s web site.
Anyhow – in Koerner’s typical pattern that all would have been created in one week, and rushed to the publisher still wet – ALONG WITH several smaller vignettes and illustrations.
Many of these pieces have not left the family’s walls since the publishers returned them, seven or eight decades ago. One shows a Lone Ranger-like vigilante horseman, with black mask, black shirt, white bandana, and drawn revolver. “Coming Home” is a lovely quiet play of shadow, with one welcoming source of light. “Fremont at Monterey,” on the other hand, has light applied with a fire hose. John C. Fremont, then in the process of stealing California, rides like a general, a President, a king, or even a demigod, dominating the painting, the other characters, and even the blue sky and the ships in the bay. His long gauntlets and his tilted hat set off his epauletted cavalry blouse, and he’s self-consciously an empire builder. Koerner family members were tickled to learn that we have a Town of Fremont, named for the man who was one of America’s leading heroes in his day.
Fremont was a historic figure, but he was also a myth. Koerner’s outstanding illustrations reflect the myths as American told them a hundred years ago. The juxtaposition of this work with the Anghik sculptures captures some of the best of our old uncritical view of the west, while reminding us of its unreality, and opening us to the truth of the west in a new century. I keep saying this about Rockwell special exhibits, but I don’t mind saying it again – go see these two shows.

New at the Rockwell: A World of Man, Animals, and Spirits

Last week, at Rockwell Museum, I had the privilege of meeting sculptor Abraham Anghik Ruben. In fact, I paid for the privilege, and was glad I did.
I discover that Mr. Ruben and I first saw the light of day in the same month, 22 days apart – he in western Canada’s Arctic expanse, I under the sea wind in Rhode Island. He was born into a society largely preliterate, but quickly being brutalized (even more than it had been) in a dream of helpfulness. My life was among feverishly literate people, but with rages and alcoholism, and early hearing loss, all deep enough to leave permanent scars. And, it seems, Mr. Ruben and I reveled in nature, and both devoured stories.
In each case, many of the stories were family based, and community based. In my home we spent many late late nights around the dining table with family and friends, telling the tales of those who’d gone before and often asking “Now who is he (or she)?” – meaning, who’s he related to? No one expected people to behave just like their families, or even anything like their families. But no one seem properly located in space until we knew who and where he came from.
Awash in nature and stories and family and grievously unkind kindnesses, we both became storytellers. Abraham Ruben tells stories in metal and stone, and you can see them at the Rockwell.
He considers himself a contemporary artist who happens to be Inuvialuit, and his work clearly draws upon the traditional work of the Arctic. The first glance signals that, but the second look reveals that it’s far, far more. This is indeed 21st-century art springing from, and still rooted in, traditional forms.
The exhibit is entitled “The World of Man, Animals, and Spirit.” It’s an expression of becoming, and of transforming. Within any given sculpture, transformation often takes place physically. In the falcon’s wing, human forms appear, busy about their earth-bound lives. Thor becomes a bear becomes a falcon. In the folds of a robe, falcon and fish appear.
But transformation takes place at a higher level, too. Amergin’s Prayer: The Poem of Eire depicts an Irish Brehon of the transitional time from druidry to Christianity. The holy man is going into (or coming from?) the wilderness where he encounters the mysteries. His staff and his book speak to the counsel he gives, but his face shows the exhausting agony of his experience, and his body has wide spaces for the wind of the spirit to blow through.
Kublualak: The Right of Passage also pictures the agony of transformation, as Kublualak sprawls in the talons of a gigantic falcon. Following the Spanish influenza of 1918 the Inuvialuit numbered just 156 souls, and Kublualak sought guidance in solitude, of which the Arctic abounds. The falcon appeared to him in a storm to guide him in the shaman’s way, but only on condition that the gift be used for the people. Kublualak was in fact instrumental in their surviving as Inuvialuits.
Shaman With Rune Sticks interprets the shape-shifting Norse god Odin as shaman and storyteller. Fatigue is incised in his face, and on his back he bears his own fated (and fatal) battle with the Fenriswolf, with which the world will end.
How did Odin wander in? As he started working with the calamity of global heating, Mr. Ruben increasingly has taken a circumpolar view, recognizing that the Vikings are also children of the north. Those with long memories will recall Dr. Magnus Agustsson’s 1999 sculpture exhibit, “The Viking Vision,” at Curtiss Museum, followed by a smaller show at Cornell, and exhibitions in Washington and Reykjavik. Dr. Agustsson drew on the myths and sagas recited and sung beside the fire, and there are echoes across the exhibits. In The Beginning, Mr. Anghik imagines a Viking discovering a harpoon and recognizing… perhaps with despair… that they are not alone in this hostile New World. The Viking Vinlanders didn’t last, and the Viking Greenlanders never learned to adapt. The Beginning, of course, is paired with The End, in which an Inuit family, moving into now-empty spaces, broods over an abandoned helmet of the long-gone Norse.
Ruben Anghik’s Vision to me is this show’s pre-eminent piece. The artist’s grandfather, like Walt Whitman, contains multitudes. He speaks and he gestures, as he did when the artist, at five years of age, was called with other family members to witness the old man’s will shortly before his passing. Ruben Anghik spoke of the years to come, and of ways the people would need to adapt in order to survive. The duotone soapstone suggests his imminent passing, but his expression, as he sees what lies ahead, seems to me an expression of pleased surprise. Continuity – becoming – transformation – change – family – the people – the farthest North – Anghik’s Vision gathers all the threads.
(“Man, Animals, and Spirits” is one of an exciting pair of exhibits just opened at the Rockwell. While Mr. Anghik’s work is clearly contemporary, “Illustration and Imagination” is a stunning collection of illustration paintings, some nearly a century old, by W.H.D. Koerner. When I first encountered Mr. Anghik he was by himself, taking in the Koerner paintings while muttering, “Wonderful, wonderful.” He was absolutely right, and we’ll look at THAT exhibit next week.)

Walk Into Yesterday — in Bath

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Broad straight boulevards. Green grassy squares. Historic churches, imposing government buildings. Washington. Paris. Bath.
The comparison may provoke either a smirk or a raised eyebrow. But fascinatingly, Bath had that layout when Paris was still a jam-packed walled city left over from the Middle Ages, and Washington didn’t even exist. And therein hangs a tale.
Charles Williamson and his companions plied their axes to clear what’s now Pulteney Square back in 1793, not long after we’d finished “legally” stealing the place from the Iroquois – who lived by the thousands, along with other nations and even some whites, in Williamson’s million-acre empire.
Williamson was the land agent for all those acres, and he laid out Bath as the great metropolis-to-be of western New York. Through the Conhocton-Chemung-Susquehanna system Bath had excellent water connections with the Tidewater, and those rivers formed the great axis of travel and transportation.
Then that busybody DeWitt Clinton went and put through the Erie Canal. Little no-account shanty towns like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester started to thrive, while growth in Bath stopped short. It revived with the Erie Railroad 25 years later, and grew slowly, still following the stately pattern laid down two generations before.
On Friday, May 16, I’m going to be leading a historic walk through the Bath downtown area, where we’ll see Williamson’s layout and what local folks have done with it in the past two centuries.
We’re starting at the Magee House (Steuben County Historical Society), which was a dramatic foursquare giant when erected in 1831. Bath pretty much petered out at what we call Washington Street back then, though there was a little satellite settlement (Cooktown) around the mills a today’s West End. Then we’ll stroll, at whatever pace suits us, down to Pulteney Square.
There we can take a 360-degree look at the 1819 Balcom House, with its dramatic columns… the towering 1833 Bank of Steuben… the 1860 courthouse, third of its line on that spot… plus the post-Civil War county clerk’s building, surrogate’s building, and Presbyterian Church. We’ll capture almost the whole 19th century all at once. We’ll even see how many mistakes we can find in the Williamson monument.
In the Liberty Street business district we’ll peek at the pre-fab cast-iron building… the old movie theater… the space that once had a two-lane bowling alley… and the limits of the 1935 flood.
We’ll also look at the four green corners where Liberty meets Washington. This was originally St. Patrick’s Square, and the street St. Patrick’s Street. They took on more “American” names in the 1850s. A wave of Irish immigration was terrifying many Americans, who considered the Irish a non-white race that could never be fit for citizenship. A Catholic congregation had even started in Bath, and many folks were just as hysterical about Catholic churches as some folks are about mosques today.
We’ll also learn which of the Bath churches was noted as the abolitionist church, and look for fieldstone construction. The pace and the distance will be flexible for the group’s wishes, but I’m figuring about a mile and a half. We’ll cancel if it rains. Your own stories and reminiscences are welcome! The historic walk is sponsored by Steuben County Historical Society; there’s no charge, and no registration. Just a nice walk and a peek at the history that we (maybe) overlook every day.

The Trials of Canadaigua, Part 3– Susan B. Anthony

Earlier in this space we’ve looked at two notable legal cases involving Canandaigua. The execution of 19 year-old Canandaigua native Midshipman Philip Spencer energized the drive to create our Naval Academy in Annapolis. The attempt in 1800 to indict Penn Yan prophetess Jemima Wilkinson for blasphemy was part of the hurly-burly of frontier life.
An 1873 trial, though, was far more significant. Curiously, this concerned a “crime” that took place in the Eighth Ward of Rochester, where Susan B. Anthony had registered to vote. So had some 50 other women, all of whom arrived at their various polling places on election day demanding to exercise their franchise. Fifteen were admitted citywide, prompting rapid action by U.S. Marshals, who arrested Anthony at her Madison Street home less than two weeks later. She dramatically extended her wrists to be handcuffed (they declined), then told the streetcar conductor he could get the price of her ticket from her captors, since this was their ride, not hers. You can see the room in which the arrest took place by visiting the house, now open to the public.
All fifteen women, and the male election officials who admitted them, were arrested, but all the other cases were held in abeyance until Anthony was tried. For two decades she had been the best-known face and voice of the women’s suffrage movement, besides her ardent campaigning for abolition, civil rights, and other reforms. We know that she had spoken in Bath on January 5, 1855, then in Corning on the seventh and ninth. She also did meetings in Cohocton and Caton on dates of which we’re not certain.
Out on bail after her 1872 arrest, she undertook a speaking tour of every town and village in Monroe County. This scared prosecutors so much that they moved the trial to Canandaigua; she then barnstormed every village in Ontario County. In either venue, they were going to get a jury that had had ample opportunity to hear her opinions on the matter.
The trial took place in the gold-domed courthouse that still presides over upper Main Street. After two days of testimony the judge ordered the jury to give a directed verdict of guilty. Given a chance to speak on day three, Anthony took over the courtroom, pacing the room, blasting the judge’s conduct and passionately setting forth the case for women’s suffrage, even as the judge vainly tried to regain control by getting her to sit down and shut up. When she finally paused long enough for him to fine her a hundred dollars she snapped, “I shall never pay one dollar of your unjust penalty.” And she didn’t, either.
What she DID do was deeply burn the struggle into the minds of the public. For 60 years she embodied the fight for votes, and though women voted in a number of states by the time she died in 1906, she wasn’t one of them. New York wouldn’t get full suffrage until 1918 (two years ahead of the national amendment). So except for some technical exceptions (since she owned a house, she could vote on property tax issues beginning in 1901), I suppose that that presidential ballot of 1872 was the only one she ever cast. She might have voted for Horace Greeley or Ulysses Grant, or for the Labor Reform Party (she was also a union organizer… I guess in her spare time). But the People’ Party had nominated Victoria Woodhull for president and Anthony’s old comrade Frederick Douglass as vice-president, raising the banner at once for African Americans and woman Americans, both of whom struggled under crushing weights of oppression and prejudice. If you only had one vote in your entire long lifetime (86 years), I imagine that one would be pretty satisfying.