Summer Rooms

'If ever I would leave you,' my mother used to sing, 'it wouldn't be in summer...' but precisely 8 years ago she did just that.  Death has no rules or timeline, and is especially not going to align with poetic or lyrical predictions. Being the one sure consequence of life, it unfortunately informs all of our daily routines, and our higher thoughts. 

Last week's heatwave prompted some air-conditioned time at neighborhood museums.  The most moving pieces in the Rashid Johnson show were the ones that reminded me of death-- of killing and the indelible anxiety of blackness.  The Ben Shahn show-- a mere shadow in popularity-- was riveting for me-- his unique artistic activism which seemed to permeate all layers of injustice.  Of course as a post-mortem show, there is no platform from which he speaks... and in an era of limited media, his voice was not nearly as resonant as a super-star like Rashid in this day and age.  Artists are their own brand of entrepreneurs... the stakes are high and the rewards are massive, if one gets it right.

I also managed to stop by the Art Students League to see the retrospective of historic teachers' work.  It was soulful and quiet-- underwhelming but somehow important.  Unlike the Guggenheim, it is an old building with few upgrades.  One senses the history; it has changed little since I took a class or two in the 1970's. Purely analogue, and most if not all of the artists in this show have passed on. Unlike Rashid-- relatively young for the kind of collectability he has achieved-- their work must speak for them.  What is lost and undocumented does not affect the narrative, and most of these exhibitors will at best present as a kind of jigsaw puzzle missing a few pieces. At worst, they can be misunderstood, like an inventor/genius without a written will whose life's work ends up in a trash bin or a thrift shop.

As opposed to much of the contemporary museum fare, these paintings were 'dressed' down-- in old frames, sometimes made by the artists.  On a flea market wall they'd be hardly distinguishable to an untrained eye. While many of their makers had been in gallery shows and institutional collections, most of them ended up in middle-class homes as 'decor'. Scanning this quiet show, what is undeniable is the intention-- the day to day dedication to practice and technique without short cuts. When one mastered a certain platform, they might probe imagination and inspiration to break through to discover a new style... the organic progression of artistic genius.  These hanging works like the souvenirs of these achievements... not all brilliant but every one quietly embodying a certain skill... and a certain questioning of the basic tenets of illustration which long years of study had required.

Summer months I take in mail and water plants for my vacationing neighbors.  The younger ones generally have cleaning women who do this... but the older couples require my attention.  People my age and older have a higher tolerance for clutter than the new families with recent renovations. There are libraries-- stereo systems and record collections-- file cabinets and stacks of magazines and journals-- souvenirs from years of travel and family albums... furniture and handmade pillows-- knick-knacks-- mantel clocks, andirons, rugs... art. Their apartments tell a story... reveal their age and politics in a way that is comforting.  They are readers and former explorers... they are still, in older age, studying things-- listening. They do not text me but send an occasional email or even a postcard. 

Years ago musicians often stopped by my house-- to play me a new song, or go over arrangements and harmonies for a show.  I took this for granted.  The pandemic silenced us-- aside from that 7 PM clanging and ringing across the city, one respected that there were people who were ill and subdued.  We were solitary. As opposed to those joyful days when we'd crank up our stereo and open the windows, most people now use earbuds and stream their music. 

As a girl almost everyone had a piano-- some a grand Steinway, but most homes-- even poor ones-- had a kind of funky parlor instrument. People sat around and sang. In my house there was old sheet music that got stored in the piano bench.  When you Wish Upon a Star... with the little Jiminy Cricket cartoon on the cover... stands out in memory.  My Mom played and sang-- badly, but there it was... her favorite songs.  Everyone had a hi-fi, with a space for record albums... most families had the same Broadway classics... West Side Story, My Fair Lady...The Music Man.  We knew all the words. It was a kind of commonality.

When my son had his first 'away' playdate, I was told he wandered around the apartment looking for the boy's Mom's guitars. He assumed everyone was a musician like me.  These days guitars are a kind of accessory-- one sees them in department store windows, on the video 'set' of journalist and podcasters... there is often a guitar on a stand... in staged rooms on real estate platforms. 

My home tells a story. No longer do we use sheet music and write out our new songs on staff paper. Even I have a digital synth/piano which I play through headphones... but wandering through my older neighbors', I can almost hear my old Mom's childlike soprano shyly singing these songs to me.  I can smell the old music sheets and see the notes and chords as they were written-- as I taught myself, on the old piano... when life was black and white, when the 'practice' of music was woven into days and nights, and like a kind of religion, I believed in lyrics that promised no one would leave. 

Collections-- Part 1

Saturday afternoons for years I work at a gallery.  Generally it is quiet there- people come in one or two at a time, spend time thoughtfully in what are generally minimal displays, occasionally engage in a brief dialogue, and leave.  But for the past month, visitors have come in droves more or less, brought in by review after review of a place that is usually off the press radar.  What brings the attention is a small show of selected collections of seven artists.  Each grouping has been carefully curated from objects or small precious things from their respective homes.  In one case, the articles are gathered posthumously from the apartment of a deceased photographer who was apparently kind of a hoarder.  These are grouped on a wall in the front of the gallery-- close together and informally, as they might be in one's home-- simultaneously thoughtfully and not thoughtfully, so they seem a bit spontaneous and natural, in direct contrast to the clean minimalism of the gallery.

The number of people attracted to this random grouping has been astonishing.  I mean, it looks a bit like any vaguely middle-class bohemian parlor-wall-- things painted a bit amateurishly, things of vague value from thrift shops and flea markets...  of a certain period.  Week after week, people gaze in through the glass and sigh at this wall-- with a kind of nostalgia-- young people, well-dressed people; some even ask prices, which are irrelevant to this non-selling exhibition.  What they are seeing is a kind of diorama of this now-deceased person's home, of his aesthetic.   And they respond.

Each of the artists in the show is a collector... of things-- of art, toys, objects... souvenirs.  In a way it is a voyeuristic non-verbal biography of their personal culture-- a portrait of what they love, what comforts them or reminds them-- what inspires and excites them.  True artists are pioneers.  They discover things-- places-- in a different way.  They see a landscape and go home and paint horizontal geometry; they hear a siren and a crash and they compose a violent symphony.  They find a rock or some random object, and they transform it-- they absorb and transcend.

Over the last twenty years or so, people's homes in this city have become more and more minimal.  Technology allows them to live without paper; many have renovated apartments and removed books, records--- things.  Their lives are hard-edged and their lines are clean.  They have windows onto the city, gadgets which fit into drawers and low-tables with only a single book or object.  Clutter has become something to be shunned or hidden.  Closets are organized; there are experts who assist  with this process-- they oversee the discarding and paring-down of the unnecessary.   iPods and phones hold thousands of albums; we no longer need the packages.  Thrift shops are crammed with donations; some have recently declined to accept books; they are glutted with material.

But I have noticed-- inspiration has changed.  The things that 'drive' contemporary art have changed.  Art is about walls, or computers, or animation-- or concepts.  Art is packaged, marketed, less 'hands-on' and more mechanized, impersonalized.  It is digital-- animated, computer-generated.  It has ideas-- large ideas-- but less soul, less heart.  Some of it is created on a huge scale--  cute things-- toys, animals-- that tower over us, as though these 'soft' things are only culturally relevant when they are bloated or monumentalized.  We are jaded and spoiled and cannot 'see' the obvious.  We are adult children and are emotionally unsophisticated from the constant bombardment of phone-stimuli.  The New York Times recently revealed staggering numbers of adults who admit to sleeping with a stuffed toy.  The culture of pets and domestic animals is larger than ever; we sublimate and transfer and rely on our animals for affection.

So maybe this is a clue to the reception of the show-- that these same people who have eliminated the clutter in their lives, but maybe not the longing of their hearts-- are looking at this wall with a kind of recognition.  It represents domestic nostalgia-- a version of visual comfort and aesthetic calm-- like seeing a wall of small landscapes, or a display of rocks... a row of vases, or a garden of things that have grown, things that are interesting to see and aesthetically pleasing.  Inspiring and spiritually nourishing.  Beautiful and not inaccessible, the way museum art can be-- but small and personal and meaningful, the way life and 'collecting' used to be.   They find a connection, here-- they look and look, they ask prices, and standing in front of the wall seems to change their 'speed'.

When my son's friends came into the gallery to see this well-received show, they  remarked that the 'wall' looked just like my apartment.  Millenials come into my home these days and marvel at the number of paintings on the wall, and the rows of books-- the shelves of vinyl and the instruments.  They look around and sometimes they take down a book and absorb themselves.  Sometimes I remind myself I am not going to live forever and I must begin to sift through my possessions.  This is difficult for me; it is a life lived here--- my things, my friends, my nonhuman children-- my muses and my comfort.  Yes, there is a degree of relative clutter, but there is also a kind of soul.  The room is not about the space but what defines it-- the content.   This is my life... my collection, my object-family.

The exhibition ended on Saturday.  It gave me a little hope that gallery-visitors and cultural trendsetters are maybe beginning to thaw just slightly from the techno-cold aesthetic that has defined interior design and contemporary office decor.   These people who paint their skin and own animals and live in 'clean' spaces are beginning to let humanity in... a bit of history, nostalgia-- vinyl, materials... the thrill of a forgotten thrift-shop painting.  Take out your earphones once in a while and talk to an older person-- listen to the sound of things, and find your passion, your own unique collection.  You will be rich in ways you have yet to uncover.

 (To be continued)