Meeting Mikhail

On Friday night, I got to meet Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the greatest dancers ever. How exactly did I meet him, you might ask? Well, the Weinstein Gallery in south Minneapolis is showing an exhibition of photographs that Baryshnikov took of Merce Cunningham's dance company. Friday night was the opening, and Mikhail was there! Since the Weinstein Gallery is just blocks from where I live, I figured I'd head over to the gallery. I saw Baryshnikov dance a few years ago, and it was simply amazing. I can't say I'm an expert on dance, not by a long shot, but I do enjoy watching it.

The Weinstein Gallery is tiny, just two large rooms, and the window air conditioners were ineffective. The rooms were crowded with people trying to get a glimpse of Mikhail. He was dressed coolly, in a white shirt and black trousers, and I was surprised at how tiny he is. He can't be more than 5'6" or 5'7", and his frame is just so small, petite, even. He still has a thick head of hair, dark brown flecked with gray, and his blue eyes are piercing. Needless to say, at 60, he's still incredibly handsome. (Surprise, surprise!) And he's an incredibly nice person, posing for photographs with people, signing autographs, chatting with them. I got to shake his hand, and told him how much I enjoyed seeing him dance. Then I said, "It's nice to meet you." He replied, "It's nice to meet you too!" What a cool guy.

Readings on Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, by Robert S. Mattison, 2003.

Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg, by Calvin Tomkins, updated edition, 2005.

Obviously, Robert Rauschenberg's life and artwork cannot be summed up by me in one blog post. There are many avenues of his work I didn't even touch on, such as his performance art pieces, and his work as set designer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. There are several books I would recommend for further investigation about this wonderful and fascinating artist.

Calvin Tomkins's Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg, is a great book that covers Rauschenberg's life and career up to the mid-60's. (Merce Cunningham comes of as a major jerk in this book, he seems petty and annoyed when Rauschenberg become successful.) Originally published in 1981, it was updated in 2005 with a chapter Tomkins wrote for a New Yorker article.

Leo Steinberg's Encounters with Rauschenberg is a good little book, showing how one wary art critic (Steinberg) eventually became a fervent supporter of Rauschenberg's work.

Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, by Robert S. Mattison, is a good, well-illustrated book. I haven't read the entire book, but it's good.

Robert Rauschenberg: October Files, edited by Brandon Joseph, is a good compendium of important articles about Rauschenberg's work.

Robert Rauschenberg, by Sam Hunter, though unimaginatively titled, is a solid work featuring reproductions of more than 100 Rauschenberg works. It includes many later works, although Hunter, like most other authors, concentrates in the text on the 1950's and 60's. Hopefully soon someone will write more about Rauschenberg's post-1964 work.

Rauschenberg is also sadly lacking in entry-level, ie, cheap, art books about him. For some reason, he was not included in the Abbeville Modern Masters series, although they did include Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. It's like, okay, there's someone missing among this group of artists...he has also never had a Taschen book written about him. Taschen has a great series of cheap books about the canonical "great artists," and they are a good introduction and overview of an artist's life and work. There are books covering just about every major painter, ever, from Leonardo, Caravaggio, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, to Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. Guess who still doesn't have a Taschen book? Robert Rauschenberg. Anyway, if I whetted your appetite for more Rauschenberg, check out some of these books. If you're interested in more images of Rauschenberg's work, check out the Sam Hunter book, if you're interested in more about his life, check out the Calvin Tomkins book.

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008.

Robert Rauschenberg at work, circa 1963.

Retroactive I, by Robert Rauschenberg, 1963.

Trophy II (For Teeny and Marcel Duchamp), by Robert Rauschenberg, 1960.

The American artist Robert Rauschenberg died in May at the age of 82. He was one of the 20th century's greatest artists, and one of my own favorite artists. He was brilliant in many different mediums, and consistently prolific. His friend Jasper Johns said once that Rauschenberg was the artist "who had created the most in this century, except for Picasso."

Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, and had no idea becoming an artist was a career possibility until about the age of 20, when he visited the Henry E. Huntington Library, in San Marino, CA. There he saw Thomas Gainsborough's famous painting, The Blue Boy. "This was my first encounter with art as art," he said. When he understood that "somebody actually MADE those paintings, it was the first time I realized you could be an artist." He studied at the renowned Black Mountain College under Josef Albers in the late 1940's. One can scarcely imagine two artists more different in approach than Albers and Rauschenberg. Albers's most famous works come from a series of more than 1,000 works called Homage to the Square, which are rigidly geometric works, most with the same basic pattern. In contrast, Rauschenberg's work always looked thrown together, he always let the outside world into his works, and he engaged with the outside world in a way that was scorned by many serious art critics at the time. Although the two men did not get along, Rauschenberg respected Albers, saying of him, "Albers was a beautiful teacher and an impossible person. He wasn't easy to talk to, and I found his criticism so excruciating and so devastating that I never asked for it. Years later, though, I'm still learning what he taught me, because what he taught me had to do with the entire visual world. He didn't teach you how to 'do art.' The focus was always on your personal sense of looking. I consider Albers the most important teacher I've ever had, and I'm sure he considers me one of his poorest students."

Some of Rauschenberg's earliest important works would set the tone for Minimalism, a movement that was still a decade off, and in a way, became the first and last words on the subject. He created a series of all-white canvases in the early 1950's, and also painted a series of all-black canvases around the same time. What could possibly be more minimal than that? These works also had a great influence on the composer John Cage, and his famous piece 4'33", which is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. Or so it seems. What actually happens during the silence is that the audience becomes aware of all the other noise around them, as nothing is ever totally silent. A similar thing happens with Rauschenberg's white paintings. You can see reflections of what's happening in the gallery on the all-white canvas. In this way, the painting becomes a reflection of the outside world, just as Cage's piece, which is ostensibly silent, becomes a reflection of the concert hall.

But Rauschenberg's restless nature would not let him stay in Minimalism very long. By the mid-fifties, he was creating challenging new works that were a hybrid of sculpture and painting. Rauschenberg's term for them was combines, because they combined the two art forms. A typical combine work would feature all kinds of different colored paint, along with artifacts from the outside world, such as neckties, a stuffed rooster, a bedspread, and, most famously, a stuffed goat. The combines are difficult to interpret, but they show an artist willing to engage the outside world in a conversation. In his 1955 work Bed, Rauschenberg took his pillow and blanket, attached them to a canvas, and slathered them with different colors of paint. Similar to Jasper Johns's work of the same period, Rauschenberg was littering his work with man-made objects, like Coca-Cola bottles, thus paving the way for Pop Art.

It was around this time, the mid-fifties, that Jasper Johns entered Rauschenberg's orbit. There was an instant connection, and soon the two lovers were sharing an apartment. They would discuss art endlessly, and their influence on one another's work was of lasting importance. By the time they broke up in 1961, both artists were at a creative peak. Johns's career was taking off, as MOMA had bought three works from his 1958 solo exhibition, and Rauschenberg was building momentum.

Rauschenberg's work underwent another huge change when he discovered silkscreens around 1961. Now, in addition to his combines, he was creating canvases with silkscreened images of stop signs, bald eagles, JFK, and glasses of water, all held together by expressionistic brush strokes. Because of the silkscreened images, these pictures were somewhat similar to those being done by Andy Warhol at the same time. Indeed, Warhol may have been the person who introduced Rauschenberg to silkscreening. But, instead of focusing on rows and rows of the same image, as Warhol often did, Rauschenberg's canvases were jammed, almost overloaded, with visual information. Rauschenberg's work, largely critically derided until this time, was now being re-evaluated. He had a major retrospective at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1963, which raised his stock considerably. But the biggest honor was yet to come. In 1964, he won the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale, becoming just the third American artist to ever do so. The art establishment was finally taking notice of this striking artist. So what did Rauschenberg do? From Europe, he called a friend in New York, and told him to go to his studio and destroy all of his silkscreens. He would never work with that set of images again. Now that success had finally beckoned, Rauschenberg firmly broke with the past, partly for fear of repeating himself and becoming stale. As he said in an interview from 2000, "I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the time I am bored or understand-I use those words interchangeably-another appetite has formed."

His work continued to change and grow throughout the rest of his long career. In 1984, he formed the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, or ROCI for short. The aim was to travel to other countries, and exchange art and ideas, in the hope of promoting "world peace and understanding." To the end, he kept right on creating and transforming, always seeking some new idea. He was once asked what his greatest fear was. He said, "That I might run out of world." Thankfully, he never did.

RIP, Tim Russert

Like everyone, I was sadly shocked to hear that Tim Russert died yesterday. For a political junkie like me, it was a bad day. He will be sadly missed on Election Night in November. Who will be there with a dry-erase board working out Electoral College possibilities? I know John King at CNN has that super high-tech touch-screen thing, but it's just not the same. Seriously, though, Tim Russert will be missed for the dedication and intelligence he brought to his job. Clearly, he loved what he was doing, and it showed. And he asked good questions, not crap questions like, "Where's your flag pin?" or, "How much do you think Reverend Wright loves America? Does he love it more than he loves his dog?" Okay, so a viewer/voter asked the flag pin question, thus further eroding my faith in democracy. Russert seemed like a really nice guy who just happened to host the most important political talk show on TV. On NBC's nightly news last night, Brian Williams talked to two colleagues who had both asked Russert to be the godfather to their sons. I think that says a lot about the kind of guy Tim Russert was, on and off-screen. He will be missed.

I'm Back!

Greetings, dear readers! I apologize for my absence, but I was having computer issues. Yeah, it was not a lot of fun. But now I am back on the Internets, as our President would say. (It's a good thing there's more than one, it could get crowded out there!) Anyway, now I will get back to the business of posting, and by business I mean "thing I do in my spare time that I don't get paid for." Just to be clear.

Ben-Hur and Gore Vidal

With the recent passing of Charlton Heston, Hollywood has lost yet another of it's larger-than-life screen stars. Kirk Douglas is really the last big star left who came to prominence in the 1940's and early 50's. Heston was never my favorite actor, and I disagree with everything he came to stand for later in his life. Although Heston actually started out as a Democrat, and was a very vocal supporter of civil rights. He was at the March on Washington in 1963, along with Burt Lancaster and Harry Belafonte, when Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. When one of his films premiered at a segregated theater in Oklahoma, Heston picketed the theater. It's really too bad he became so conservative. Had he turned Republican about 10 or 15 years before he actually did, he might well have been President. Think how popular Ronald Reagan was as President, then imagine if Heston, who was actually an A-list Hollywood star, had run for President! I mean, he played Moses, for God's sake! Ben-Hur! Michelangelo! Get your paws off me, you damn dirty ape! Soylent green is people! President Heston in a landslide!

Anyway, this got me thinking about my favorite Charlton Heston story, about Gore Vidal and the gay subtext of Ben-Hur. Gore Vidal wrote most of the screenplay for Ben-Hur, although he went uncredited at the time. Working with director William Wyler, Vidal needed to come up with a reason for the rivalry between Heston's Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd's Messala. So Gore decided that Ben-Hur and Messala had been lovers, and Messala wanted the relationship to continue, and Ben-Hur did not. Wyler didn't think it would fly, telling Vidal, "Gore, this is Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur! 'A tale of the Christ' or whatever that subtitle is. You can't do this with Ben-Hur..." Vidal convinced Wyler that none of the dialogue would hint at any kind of sexual relationship, and that it would all be shown by the expressions on the actor's faces. Wyler said to Vidal, "I'll talk to Chuck. You talk to Boyd. But don't you say a word to Chuck or he'll fall apart." According to Vidal, Heston was oblivious to the subtext, but Boyd got it and played the scene the way Vidal intended. After the scene was rehearsed, Vidal said to Wyler, "Chuck hasn't got much charm, has he?" Wyler replied, "No, and you can direct your ass off and he still won't have any."

The above quotations are taken from Gore Vidal's memoir, Palimpsest, which also features a great picture of Heston and Vidal on the set; Heston is grinning and has his hand on Vidal's shoulder.

The Short Stories of John O'Hara

John O'Hara (1905-1970) is a largely forgotten American writer today, but during his lifetime he was one of America's most famous, and best-selling, writers. He is probably best known today for his first novel, 1934's Appointment in Samarra, a Gastby-like tale of the American dream gone wrong. O'Hara prided himself on being able to perfectly capture the moods and dialogue of the USA during a specific historical moment. We would now probably call this "capturing the zeitgeist," which he certainly did. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of his references to specific brands of products fly over the head of today's readers. (Myself included.) Someone should really add footnotes to his works, to clarify to today's reader exactly what it meant to go to Yale, rather than Harvard, in 1932.

O'Hara's work is very similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald's, as both writers were concerned with issues of money and class in American society. (Okay, so they also both wrote about booze and adultery.) But class and money remained central to their work, perhaps because both writers saw themselves as outsiders to the great WASP moneyed classes. O'Hara was from a small town in Pennsylvania, and didn't have the money to go to college. Fitzgerald was from the frozen landscape of Minnesota, or what people now call fly-over land. (Although Fitzgerald did get to attend Princeton.) If you like Fitzgerald, you'll definitely like O'Hara.

I recently finished reading Great Short Stories of John O'Hara, a volume that combines two short story collections into one volume. The stories are all from the 1930's, most were published in The New Yorker, and most are extremely short. (O'Hara holds the record for the most short stories published in The New Yorker, although John Updike must be right behind him.) The first story in the book, "The Doctor's Son," is the longest in the book, and it tells the tale of an adolescent helping his father administer to sick patients during the flu epidemic of 1918-19. It's one of O'Hara's best stories, and it shows off his penchant for details.

Many of the stories are no more than two pages in length, which makes it difficult to become emotionally involved with the characters. But while the stories don't have the individual power of say, John Cheever's short stories, (which are usually about 10 pages long) their power slowly adds up. It's cumulative, you read twenty good stories in a row, and the variety is amazing. It's really a virtuosic display of talent. O'Hara shows that he had a perfect ear for dialogue, whether he was writing high-class characters or lower-class working men. He seems to have been interested in everything, as the variety of stories shows.

As I mentioned, the book is really two collections combined, and when the later collection starts, the stories become harder-edged and more fatalistic. I don't know if it's the continuing effects of the Great Depression, but the characters become involved in deeper moral dilemmas. An exception to this are the four "Pal Joey" stories, which are highly comical, and feature O'Hara's writing as it's best. Written as letters from Joey to his friend Ted, they are rife with misspellings and fractured grammar, but they get the character of a charming heel across brilliantly. O'Hara later wrote more "Pal Joey" stories, and they became the basis for the 1940 Broadway show of the same name, which starred a young Gene Kelly as Joey. Rodgers and Hart wrote the songs, two of which would become standards, "I Could Write a Book," and "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered." "Pal Joey" was later made into a movie in 1957, starring Frank Sinatra as Joey, with Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak. It's one of Sinatra's great performances, and you get to hear him sing some terrific tunes.

O'Hara is sort of an "author's author" now, with little name recognition among the public, but still respected by other writers. John Updike, a fellow Pennsylvanian, is an especially vocal fan. Gore Vidal also wrote a very favorable essay about O'Hara's works. (If you know anything about Gore Vidal, you'll know he's not favorable about very many things.) John O'Hara is a writer well worth reading, especially if you're a fan of similar writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, John Updike, and Irwin Shaw.