Page 7

There’s a great song by Lyle Lovett (sp?) about enjoying this great party, seeing all his great old friends and relatives he hadn’t seen in so long, and by the chorus, of course you realize he’s at his own funeral.

I live my life looking at beautiful things, which includes most everything, and teaching others to notice and appreciate their visual world. It bugs me that people pass by and don’t notice beauty, coolness (as in coolness), wonder, humor in the things around them. And it bugs me that I’m guilty of the same.

Thank God it’s not at a funeral that I’ve been reminded of the many, many, many beautiful, cool (as in cool), wonderful, funny, caring, thoughtful, beautiful, people surrounding me. Thank God it’s not at a funeral. All I’ve lost is about a 1/2 ounce and a little peripheral vision. Thank God for what I’ve been reminded to see.

(I just realized it would be great poetry to celebrate that I can no longer see the far-right!)

Thank you all who have called, written, offered, reminded me of some very important things.

So let’s see, update: I know I’m healthy because I still want to eat and drink everything in sight, but I think I still feeling some of the anesthesia because I really can’t take in as much as I wish I could but shouldn’t anyways. I’m driving a little but my left eye still get fatigued real quick. Still no word from the latest biopsy via eye-mail. I’m planning on more scans of various types to make sure there’s nothing else going on inside me. My right eye is the prettiest blue/black/purple. It’s amazing how kids can rise to the occasion and be sensitive when it counts. The kids and I have made a couple good-sized snow-bunnies. They all have two eyes. Maryanna is the most beautiful support system in the world.

Thank God.

peace,

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Page 6

Hey , thanks for the calls and notes! After a few very barfy hours last night I’m doing well. There’s a little ache when I move my eyes (eye) too fast. There’s a silicon ping-pong ball in there that the muscles are trying to move.

Yesterday, no, Thursday, I went into the galleries for just the second time and confirmed something I though I was seeing the day before. With one eye I am much more aware, or maybe perceptive, of the power of color to suggest space; the ability for colors seem to recede or push forward, especially when composed with other colors and in suggestive lines and shapes. Looking at Julie Mehretu’s Dispersion I was swept up in the cyclone and blown yards up and out of the picture plane ans swept back in deeper than the gallery walls could possibly contain. I swear I had to comb my hair afterward. I ran (sorry security people) to the Kandinsky Rose and Gray, and for the first time understood with the certainty of the artist himself how colors can make time and space and sound. I ran back to the Bloch Building to look at what have always been the two most powerful paintings for me; Franz Kline’s Turin seemed positively dangerous with its weighty timbers barely holding and the blackend shards jutting out at me, and the Rothko – all I can say is time really stood still as the shifting brown/purple/black surrounded me and swallowed me.

I’m not making this stuff up folks. Cammie’s (my boss) sandy orange sweater was a froth of blue, red, yellow, and orange pebbles. Why didn’t any tell me about this? It’s really quite cool; one consequence of being a cyclops that I hope I don’t adjust to.The only trouble is I’m all too aware of this red bloody (bloody!) bandage I have to wear till Monday.

So, yeah, the surgery went well. So far the biopsy tests are not completely conclusive, so the eye is going (via eye-mail) to St. Louis for more testing, and I am planning on more scanning and poking and prodding here, just to make sure there was just the melanoma.

Until then I’ll just enjoy the pretty colors.

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Page 5 revisit

Georges Rouault Wars, Dread of Mothers

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

 

It’s now my favorite work of art in the Museum. It’s small, it’s temporary, it’s easy to miss the gallery where it hangs for the short time it can be seen, and it’s one of those things that can be taken in and understood on a certain level immediately, but then, if you are lucky enough to linger in front of it, it will take you beyond the obvious, beyond the title, which no longer begins to explain the piece, beyond even second-level associations and references which can be recognized after only a few seconds looking. Its textures and values, at first heavy or accidental, become rich descriptors of strength, weight, light, intent, resistance, support. And then there’s the lines; Rouault is always about the lines.

The lines are what always pull you into a Georges Rouault work. I think I have only seen Rouault paintings, where the heavy, exclaiming lines are on the same plane, pictorially and narratively as the heavy-as-a-club colors. But in Wars, Dread of Mothers, 1927, the lines are only the beginning. They present and separate spaces that tell us things, like a stained glass window. The stories are within the lines, and segue through them. The lines exclaim the spaces.

In this small (26” x 20”) print, the real story to my eyes, (eye) is in the baby’s arm. The space of the white flesh is emphasized by the thick black outline. It is that contrast, the confident, reaching arm, that begins to tell me more of this story than the title or the obvious Madonna and Child reference. The arm of the baby is strong, reaching, directed, as is his eye. His back is straight, resolved.

The mother seems softer, supporting the resolve of the baby boy. Her mid-gray spaces stand out less against the heavy outlines. Her body droops toward the baby.

I suppose a printmaker may explain the textures differently. To me these quasi-accidental blendings and blurrings and flowings lend a tactile reality, a down-to-earth-ness to this Madonna and Child. There is shadow and shading and form and dirt and none of it is contrived, all of it seems as naturally occurring as the couple themselves. It is a lovely thing to touch with my eye.

The scene reminds me somewhat of a common one, of a baby, full of life interested in and reaching for an unseen locket on the mother’s breast, the mother watching the baby’s hand, supporting his strong body. But the contrast holds me.

The contrast between the stark, motivated, forward-looking baby and the gray, drooping, supportive mother in value, rigidity, action, and focus is telling.

There are three subjects presented here; the mother, the baby, and a building in the background that helps define a space. And there are three nouns in the title; Wars, Dread, and Mother. I see the Dread in the Mother. Where is the War? Perhaps it is in the memory of the mother, or perhaps it is in the presumption that it will continue into the future, evidenced in the forward motivation of the babe, the reach, the focus. Dread is a future-based emotion. It is of something to come.

She gave birth to, and now supports and balances the child whose hand reaches for her heart. She watches his hand, and there, perhaps are the Dread and the Wars.  She dreads because she knows it must continue.  It must continue because she holds its continuance in her lap.
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Page 5

A lot to update you on.

Biopsy results, half of them at least, are in. They tested for carcinoma, a cancer that would have spread from somewhere else in my body, and they tested for melanoma, which would be on its own in just my eye. Obviously the hope was for the melanoma. Well it took the pathologist at the Barnes Institute four days but as I was leaving work yesterday my cell phone rang. The Doctor told me the tests for carcinoma are negative. The tests for melanoma were not readable and have to be re-stained. My understanding is that it is a redundancy thing; a make-sure.

It looks like I’m clean outside of the eye.

What is certain is that we are going ahead with the surgery. The eye comes out on Friday morning. This Friday.

I’ve been exhausted all day today. I’m guessing that while waiting for the test results I’ve been running on nervous energy, and now that I can relax a little and move forward the energy that has been making me feel rather vibrant and productive the past few days has left me.

I’m eager to get this done. I’m looking forward to xmas and new years feeling like this is behind us.

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Page 4

Maryanna noted, rather uncomfortably, that I seem nonchalant about the prospect of losing an eye.

The foundation of a connection to a work of art, the most essential skill, the most important thing I say to people learning to look at art is, “Trust what you see.” You weren’t around when the work of art was made, you don’t know the artist personally, you can’t really even be completely sure of the information written on the card next to the art on the museum wall. Like they said in the ’60’s, “Question authority”. All you can really trust is what you see. So slow down and look; look carefully, notice details, notice proportions and textures. Describe what you see. And trust it.

If the thing in my eye is a melanoma, it is my decision to lose the eye rather than kill the tumor with radiation. The doctor tells me that radiation can kill it and save the eye. The problem is that the radiation necessary would damage my right eye to the extent that my vision out of that eye would be no better, and perhaps worse that before. Most people though still opt to keep the original equipment. I guess most people don’t take so seriously the desire to trust what they see. If what I see is a compromise between one good eye, and one that wants to warp, blur and color things to its own whim, I can not trust what I see. Going through life with only a left eye may mean seeing less, but I can trust what I see.

So that kinda’ worries me. It’s a sort of quality-versus-quantity issue. And most people seem to opt for quantity. Perhaps my point of view is the result of the luxury of working in a place where I am surrounded by the visual products of great minds from around the world. I am surrounded by quality. But really, the point of my teaching, my core belief as an educator, is that we are all surrounded by beauty, by quality, by intriguing, evocative, provocative, and visually awesome things. Look. Really look. Notice. Stare. It’s an amazing visual world we live in. Check it out.

I have to be careful to remind students though, there is a difference between trusting what you see, and taking for granted what you see. You really need to get used to looking at what you see. Really look and notice details and relationships. That is looking you can trust.

The biopsy went well. I’m still waiting for results. The pathologist is looking carefully and closely.

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Page 3

 

 

I have a love/hate relationship with irony.

The irony of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture pushes you toward a new way of thinking about the things you take for granted in your everyday life; a thing is not what it is, or what you think it should be.  I love the irony in an abstract painting or instrumental piece of music having at least as much meaning as a detailed depiction or verbal description.

I recently worked with an eight-grade girl making a movie about the power, pride and passion communicated by the black slashes of Franz Kline’s Turin. Feelings of strength, eternity, death and decay all came out of the dozen or so quickly made strokes on the white canvass and spoke to her, moved her. Yet this is the painting I hear most often provoking the,”My child could make that…” response from viewers.

How can a thing so shallow and meaningless be so deep and meaningful? Gotta love the irony.

What I hate is when God gets ironic.

The two activities that most define me are music and art. I’ve been a drummer and a drawer and looker my whole life. About ten years ago while climbing a tree to get an apple for a neighbor kid, I tore a tendon in my left wrist. I’m doing a mitzva, right? The doctors realized it was torn a year later, when it was too late to repair. The worst injury I have had till now was to my wrist. To this drummer, who works pretty damn hard trying to get to know God, that’s a very un-funny irony.

Now have this wonder job, looking at, talking about, and connecting others with art. A tumor in the eye is ironic.

So, Let’s think about this… It seems that irony, whether intentional or unintentional that is man-made, is revealing, transcendent, at least funny. Irony on the part of Nature is pretty ugly.

My MRI came back negative; there’s nothing to worry about in my brain (except maybe to some authority figures). The doctor still doesn’t know what this tumor is though. Tomorrow I go to Saint Louis to a specialist in needle biopsies.

I plan to be back in KC in time for my kid’s band concert. He’s a pretty promising horn player. Just the kind of guy God would give a fat lip.

(cont.)